Kurt Bills is the Republican nominee for Senate in Minnesota

By: conservativerock5 (Diary) | May 19th, 2012 at 02:02 PM |

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State Representative Kurt Bills has won the Republican nomination for Senate in Minnesota. He will face off against Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic incumbent.

Kurt Bills is 42 years old, has been married for 17 years, has 4 children, and owns a home daycare. While Kurt has been in the state legislature for little over a year, he has been a high school economics teacher for the past 15 years, ingraining free market virtues in students year after year. Bills is anything but a career politician and understands the problems of average Americans.

Kurt Bills’ main platform is naturally promoting sound economic policies and fiscal responsibility. He supports a balanced budget, simplifying the tax code and lowering taxes, rolling back costly regulations, free trade, and stopping inflation and preventing credit bubbles. If elected, Kurt will be one of the leading economic experts in the Senate. Additionally, he will work to get government out of our healthcare market, and wants to reform Social Security. On social issues, Bills is strongly pro-life and supports marriage between a man and a woman. With regards to foreign policy, he supports Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” policy and understands that while we must have a strong national defense, we cannot intervene into every part of the world; Bills supports ending foreign aid.

This is going to be an important Senate race. Klobuchar voted for unpopular legislation such as the Affordable Care Act and the Protect IP Act. Bills will need funding, so I encourage that organizations such as FreedomWorks, the Club for Growth, and the Senate Conservatives Fund be contacted to pour money into this race.

http://kurtbills.com/

COMMENTS

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Viet71

Candidate and his wife and kids.

How do I know he won’t roll over and become a RINO?

conservativerock5

There is no real answer, because in everybody’s case we always have to see how they vote.

But based on his short time in the state legislature, and based on his long held economic beliefs, I have confidence in him.

http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

nt

conservativerock5

He openly agrees with Paul on issues such as the Federal Reserve, and they like each other. So what? The same thing goes with Ted Cruz and Paul. DeMint and Paul are friends. The fact is, Paul is right on most issues, he just has some kinks in the foreign policy. That is the reasonable position, the Paul phobia is the unreasonable position.

conservativerock5

Bills won the Republican Party’s endorsement, so he is likely to be the candidate, however technically someone else can choose to challenge him.
Scope

How about you get a little more honest here and just admit that Paul’s foreign policy is alien to anything American. Then again if you are a Paulie, you would agree that the country can be protected with a “few good submarines.” Ron Paul is a Communist sympathizer from way back.. Why did he hire Lew Rockwell to be his top guy, who back then wrote some of the most racissss things known to man. Right after 911, he said that the attack was just trumped up hogwash, just as the Communist charges were back in the 50′s. Ron Paul is a dangerous, dangerous man. Why do you think he only gets the most support from the squisy headed college students? They are the only ones without the sense to know the difference between green and purple, or that 2+2 really does equal 4, no matter what anyone else wants to tell you. Ron Paul is a propagandist who needs to sit on his front porch, and only be allowed to destroy the minds of his grandchildren.

conservativerock5

I try to put conspiracy theories to the side, and find out peoples true perspectives.

Sensationalism aside, I would respond by saying that the charge that he is a communist sympathizer is laughable, as he is anti-communist. I am not aware that Lew Rockwell is a racist. After 911, there were some people that took advantage of the situation as in any crisis. Remember what Rahm said? That is not to say that the attack was not real, or that is wasn’t a terrible tragedy, but that the tragedy is being twisted for other means. As far as the rest of the post….just sensationalism.

Overall, I would agree with Paul that we need to declare war, that it should be fought with overwhelming force with no national building, no foreign aid, that our military needs to be modernized and we can cut down on (some) troops overseas, and I agree that our constitutional protections supercede fears of Muslims. He is right that we cause many unfavorable situations by trying to intervene in every single place, only causing more harm that good. But that isn’t unique to him, any student of history can understand that, and that is applies to everybody.

But there are points where I have disagreement. I believe we should keep Gitmo open. I don’t want all the bases closed down, only those that are wasteful. While I generally agree preemptive war causes more harm than good, I believe the cost-benefit is flip flopped dramatically in cases of dangerous nuclear states such as Iran and North Korea, and those are some rare cases in which intervention will create a much better outcome for the United States.

http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

If you can’t understand that, you’re beyond hope.
conservativerock5

Very different situation, obviously.
gekster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution

Iraq Resolution

(Not to be confused with Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists or Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 1991.)

(caption from picture not shown from website)
President George Bush, surrounded by leaders of the House and Senate, announces the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, October 2, 2002.

The Iraq Resolution or the Iraq War Resolution (formally the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002,[1] Pub.L. 107-243, 116 Stat. 1498, enacted October 16, 2002, H.J.Res. 114) is a joint resolution passed by the United States Congress in October 2002 as Public Law No: 107-243, authorizing military action against Iraq.

Saying we ‘are’ going to kick your butte with our military is pretty much declairing war.
Dave_A

Congress having the power to declare war doesn’t mean that we have to actually do so before we can fight.

It just means that if we get this odd desire to be idiotic & old-fashioned, and announce to our enemy that we are going to war with them… Only Congress can do that.

However, as common sense has replaced the old-ways, we now know that the best way to start a war, is how Japan did in 1941 – just attack…

That relegates the power to declare war to the same ‘dustbin of history’ as the power to issue Letters of Marque – Congress has both powers, but NEITHER will ever be used again.

As for how to fight, ‘nation building’ is essential to a counter-insurgency. We can’t just ‘use overwhelming force, declare victory, and go home’ – that produces a situation like 1991, where we win all the battles, but fail to leave a lasting solution in place that will prevent another war.

Ron Paul’s ‘God Damn America’ attitude, his desire to eliminate 80% of the military, and his desire to BANKRUPT all of us by destroying the dollar via Austrian Economics….

Make him absolutely wrong on absolutely everything.
Dave_A

Because we are still awash with ‘Inflation Hawks’, and are completely ignoring deflation.

People keep insisting that ‘inflation is coming, OMG, we have to DO SOMETHING’….

But ignore that we came within a hair of having our entire economy torn apart by DEFLATION back in 08….

We desperately NEED some inflation right now…

About 3% would be good…

Unfortunately, thanks to Obama’s regulatory garbage, we are lucky to see 2% inflation – if that… Money isn’t moving, and thus the FED’s interest rates & QE have done absolutely JACK because no one wants to invest with this incompetent ideologue in the WH…

And in case you haven’t noticed, the growth in GDP has sat right around the same level as our unsatisfactorily low inflation rate.

http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

a total hypocrite on every issue.

Exactly what is Bills’ position on the fed, because Ron Paul’s desire to eliminate them is absolute lunacy.

michaelbowler

If you can’t see that…

conservativerock5

all intellectual giants make a great case.
citizenkh

The guy who proclaimed that the government of the USSR was better and more effective than the U.S.’s?
Dave_A

Because their ideas only work in ‘Dave Ramsey Fantasy-Land’ (or, in Old Europe’s rigid class-based society)….

Austrian School economics does not account for a cashless, credit-driven economy. Which is what we have.

The Austrians focus on money being a store of value, but in the modern American economy, MONEY IS NEVER A STORE OF VALUE.

Thus making all of their arguments invalid in our economy, because American consumers have shown a clear preference for using money ONLY as a medium of exchange, and for storing value in physical goods and investment vehicles.

Now, you can wax moralistic against this all you want, but this is what the people have freely chosen & voted for with their pocketbooks.

At this point, implementing Austrian-style policies would BANKRUPT 98% of Americans.

So yes, it is absolutely the wrong policy – unless you (like Ron does) WANT to bankrupt the private economy.
Dave_A

Getting rid of the Federal Reserve & allowing Congress to set the money-supply by statute is one of those politically STUPID decisions – like starting a war with Britain & France (Germany), or kicking out all your productive commercial farmers because they happen to be white (Zimbabwe), or getting rid of your banking system (USA, Andrew Jackson) that is GUARANTEED to start a currency crisis.

There is absolutely NO WAY that any other system could do a better job of balancing our money supply, and if we were to vest that responsibility in Congress directly we would either see hyperinflation or a deflationary spiral within the first month.

Congress would either set the money supply way too large, or they would fight over the size long enough that we’d go into a deflationary spiral.

There is absolutely NO SYSTEM that ever worked better than central banking – as demonstrated by what happened to the US Economy when Andrew Jackson got rid of the 2nd Bank of the US.
PowerToThePeople

numnuts, if idiots like you and the biggest idiot of all, Ron Paul, think ending the fed is such a good thing, tell us who handles it all after the fed is demolished. Who decides all the monetary issues, you…..me…….the president (wow that would have been a disaster this go around)……..congress…who. No matter who you answer, it equals a disaster.

Ending the fed is just about the dumbest of arguments second only to the gold standard.
tcgeol

Do you really believe that all that time was a disaster? If not, then someone other than the Fed really might be capable of handling monetary policy.

There are good arguments for the Fed, but frankly, I would prefer some other way to handle the issues.
PowerToThePeople

giving an answer and simply regurgitated Paultard rhetoric.

I did not ask you what happened prior to the fed as there were many things we did back then that worked that would not work now. One prime example was the gold standard, it worked for a season, now it would be impossible.

So again, either answer the question or debate with someone else. The question was very simple, if the fed reserve was demolished today, who takes over its duties. Very, very simple, who?
tcgeol

If that isn’t plain enough, I can repeat it for you. Now, would it work well? Probably not, but at least it is part of their job. They are directly accountable to the people, where the Fed is not. I’m not saying that is always a bad thing, but I do not like having someone in control of monetary supply and policy that does not have to answer directly (in some fashion) to the people.

Secondly, I am not now and have never been a Paul supporter, although I do like a good amount of his domestic policy. One can disagree with your pet theory without being an idiot.
PowerToThePeople

So you are telling me that the idiots in Congress who have f*cked up everything they have touched so far would do a better job? Putting in a “probably would not work well” is pretty stupid considering you and others arguments about the fed now is lack of oversight which IS the job of congress and the Fed sucks. So instead of having a system that has had problems but for the most part has worked out decently transferred over to an inept branch of our government who has abused, ruined, drained, everything they touch is absurd.

And what do you think happens to our monetary system when the liberals are in charge such as from 2006-08? Imagine the damage Obama, Reid, and Pelosi could have done in the short time with full control of the reserve. Answer to the people or be more disciplined because of the populace would have kept them in line……I think not.

And did not call you a Paultard although with you last paragraph you seem to fit the name since his domestic policy is retarded and only supported by people with retarded issues, I simply stated you are regurgitating Paultard rhetoric. I also did not call you an idiot because you had not yet answered the question. Now that you have, you are an idiot when it comes to this point.
tcgeol

everything they touch, your first paragraph doesn’t make a lot of sense. Of course, liberals would destroy our money, but when evil/stupid people are elected, they are going to do evil/stupid things. That is the downside of living in a republic, but there really aren’t other options.

Thank you for not calling me a Paultard, Anyone who agrees with everything Paul says on foreign or domestic policy is an idiot, but Paul does have a number of good concepts in his domestic policy as Erick and a number of others here have admitted. If you are a Constitutionalist and hard right conservative, then you yourself should agree with some of Paul’s positions on size and scope of government as a number of other issues. If you don’t, then I would question your small government credentials. I’m not writing this to defend Paul, as I don’t really care one way or the other, but try to find a way to argue this without being insulting.

bbjaylive

…although of course he, unlike Paul, wanted it to be replaced – with a computer that increased the money supply at a certain rate of k% every year.

michaelbowler

Increasing the money supply is not necessary every year, certainly not at some set figure. You know the temptation to fudge figures would be irresistible.
Dave_A

Especially in a credit-driven economy.

If the supply does not predictably increase, then interest rates rise due to a shortage of money, and we go into a deflationary recession….

In a society that does not store value in the form of money, there is NEVER an upside to a ‘stronger’ currency’.
conservativerock5

Friedman also hinted at some free banking views, which lead me to believe he became more free market later on.

Thomas Sowell is another non-Austrian who supports ending the Fed.
Dave_A

The problem is, while people aren’t trustworthy in general, all of the alternatives to the FED put our money in the hands of LESS TRUSTWORTHY people…

IIRC, Friedman had mentioned the idea of a computer system determining the money supply based on inputs of economic data…

He wanted to replicate the action of the FED while removing all human decision-makers from the loop.

While I see his point, so far we have NOT faced a situation where the FED has acted contrary to the economic desires of the private-sector market.

What we have, are a bunch of reactionaries who refuse to accept a cashless, credit-driven economy, and want to use deflation as a whip to beat the ‘evil credit-sinners’ with…

It’s not about a better economy, it’s about bringing back a world before FICO, where people paid with cash & you couldn’t buy anything until you saved enough to pay for it…

Sorry, but the American People don’t want what that crowd is selling.
bbjaylive

The Fed hasn’t acted contrary to the economic desires of the market?

WHAT?!

What about the Great Depression, when the Fed, you know, didn’t act AT ALL?

The lender of last resort, at a time when the banks needed liquidity, lended nothing.
Dave_A

The reason I leave that out, is because in 1929, the Fed acted in a manner most Austrians would agree with & did nothing/allowed deflation due to a belief that it ‘made the market stronger’.

We were also still on the gold-standard at the time…

1929 is an example of what happens when a rapidly growing economy encounters a woefully insufficient money supply.

EG, it’s an example of what the Austrians want the US to implement now.
conservativerock5

Austrians are right, that the current system creates an economy where nobody saves, and everybody is in debt.

Let the market decide the appropriate amount of credit. Your all-knowing Federal Reserve is not competent enough to figure out the market demand for money, which has been proven since its inception.

I don’t think the American people enjoy being underwater right now, thanks to your “credit”…
Dave_A

You have it backwards. It’s not the FED or ‘fiat money’ or inflation that creates an economy where nobody saves – it’s the economy where nobody saves that creates the current monetary policy.

The market HAS decided what is an appropriate amount of credit – the Federal Reserve CANNOT force banks to lend (which is why despite record-low interest rates and 2 rounds of QE, we are also still experiencing record-low inflation).

People simply DO NOT WANT TO SAVE – and who would blame them? Why spend your whole life with nothing but ‘just barely not enough’ money, stacked in cigar boxes… When you can buy stock, or borrow, and actually have stuff you want?

It’s an easy choice, and a predictable one. And because the overwhelming majority of Americans have made that choice, MONEY IS NOT A STORE OF VALUE ANYMORE.

You can ‘not like it’, you can say it’s ‘wrong’, but none of that changes the facts on the ground. The choice has been made, there’s no going back. Money is ONLY a medium of exchange, and attempting to protect it’s 100-year value is an act of economic dictatorship – trying to force people to do something they have freely rejected.

When you ARTIFICIALLY CONTRACT the money supply in the name of ‘preserving money as a store of value’ you artificially restrict the availability of credit, and contract the economy SEVERELY.That is why I say the Austrian school is ANTI-CREDIT. They want to deflate the currency to ‘protect it’s value’, and in doing so they will; remove so much money from the economy that credit becomes impossible to obtain.

Such as what happened in 1929, when the FED followed an economic-darwinist/hard-money policy (similar to what folks like you advocate today) & caused the Great Depression.

The problem in the GD wasn’t inflation – it was DEFLATION. No one had any money, and no one could get any either. The gut-reaction of the people at the time (We had not yet moved to a credit-based economy) was to hoard money & gold, further increasing the deflationary effect.

It all could have been prevented if the FED had allowed an appropriate amount of inflation from 1913 to 1929 – or if they had increased the money supply massively at the start of the crisis…. But instead, they followed YOUR plan & stayed out of it… BANG – worst crisis in US history.

Since then, the FED has done an excellent job of managing the money supply – as proven by the US’ frantic rate of development, unmatched economic power, and extremely high standard of living compared to the pre-FED era.

The only possible way you could disagree with that, is if the only thing you care about, WRT the money supply, is the long-term value of the USD – something that flatly does not matter, so long as the short-term value maintains a predictable & slowly descending path.

conservativerock5

Ending the Fed is the best proposal either of them had. It has been causing the economy to experience drastic boom and busts for over a century, all while making us poorer.

Dave_A

The US economy was far, far more unstable during the ‘Free Banking’ era – more frequent AND more severe panics/depressions/recessions.\

The Federal Reserve, and the concept of open-market valued money have allowed us to expand our money supply as-needed to grow.

Yes, we’ve had inflation. But inflation is a GOOD THING in an economy like ours where NO ONE SAVES CASH.

Essentially, in our economy money moves so fast that the impact of 2-5% inflation is minimized. No one hangs on to their cash long enough for it to really lose value, and they exchange it for things that gain value via inflation.

We are absolutely better off now than we were before we created the FED.

The only people who aren’t are the I-will-never-use-a-bank idiots who save cash instead of buying goods or investing their savings.
http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

I thought I’d be up all night with these jackasses, you’ve done great work and, frankly, better than I would have done.
http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

involved in eliminating it. Truly impressive, as usual for him.
conservativerock5

You are clearly a Keynesian devotee, and there is no point arguing with you.
bbjaylive

…on monetary policy he’s moved the entire GOP to Cuckooland, and no one challenged him, in the debates so basically everyone assumes the GOP are “all Austrians now”, and even worse than that, high-standing Republicans have completely bought into the Rothbard/Rockwell economics.

Now, when anyone says that QE is necessary, they get accused of being a Keynesian, and everyone is railing on the Fed about how they are just “printing money” and “continuing the fiat experiment”.

It’s as if Milton Friedman and Monetarism NEVER EXISTED.
Dave_A

Because he offers a 3rd-way between the economics of social democracy, and the Austrian view…

And because his 3rd-way has been universally adopted by conservative policy-makers, whereas Austrianisim flounders in the wilderness, due to it’s inability to cope with an economy where the market doesn’t value the long-term value of money. …
bbjaylive

… and prefer to solely use A PRIORI knowledge instead.
Dave_A

As we will see in this thread, when the Austrians respond to my graph showing how horrid the free-banking era was for economic stability…

I also find it amusing how the means has now become the end – how the original Austrian case against central banking was ‘it is too much government control over the economy’, but modern-day Paulistine Austrians want to move from the Federal Reserve (which is designed to be highly independent & very weakly tied to government policy) to absolute government control of the money supply by placing it under direct Congressional control.

Eg, ‘We must get rid of central banks, in order to have a more free economy’ has now become ‘We must accept a less free economy, in order to get rid of central banks’.
gekster

Did you take the same online course that DeathoftheDonkey took?

He knew economics better than anyone else.
Dave_A

There are more than two schools of economic thought – but it seems most Austrians are so infuriated by monetarisim (the OTHER conservative school) that they have decided to act as if it doesn’t exist…

Never mind that Monetarism has been the economics-of-choice for the conservative movement since Ronald Reagan’s presidency…. While Austianisim has never found a home in even one western nation since WWII…

Keynes was wrong – but so was Von Mises.

And as for credit, a free-marketeer would not declare any form of freely-chosen economy to be a ‘problem’. Only an AUTHORITARIAN wishing to legislate economic morality ‘for the people’s own good’ would make a statement like that.

The fact is, there are many benefits to a credit-driven private-sector economy – not the least of which is a rapid pace of innovation & new business start-ups (economies with less-developed private credit structures suffer from moribundity & a rigid class structure).

Bringing innovation to market requires a source of financing that’s available before the innovator is too old to capitalize on his innovation. That means credit.

Now, with that aside, we return to the original point – namely that it is essentially SOCIALIST to ‘engineer’ the economy against the use of credit by government action – which is what you are calling for.

The proper, FREE-MARKET economic position, is that the national monetary policy should cater to whatever the people choose it to be by their actions in the private-sector market.

And since Americans have chosen to live on personal and business credit, then that REQUIRES the monetary policy to be one of perpetual low-rate inflation.

The only way around this, is economic authoritarianism & forced bankruptcy of the entire private sector…

Funny how some so-called ‘libertarians’ are so pissed off at the mere existence of banks, that they would impose monetary dictatorship & forced bankruptcy of the entire polity simply to make their point…
conservativerock5

I am well aware of the monetarist school, their monetary theory is a lesser version of Keynesian views. Better, no doubt.

I do not hate banks. In fact, in my proposed free banking world, I would allow fractional reserve banking to be legal. I am not opposed to fractional reserve banking, I am opposed to central banking. I believe the most stable form of dollar currency is/was the gold standard, however I do not want it to be the only standard.
Dave_A

Nowhere did I say you plan to eliminate credit by banning fractional reserve. That’s the ultimate fringe position on both the left and right…

What I am saying, is that your economics eliminates credit by supporting an absurdly small money supply, thus ensuring that there is essentially no money to lend, and that interest rates for what credit is available, are absurdly high.

By making the long-term value of money the first priority, you increase it’s scarcity and diminish it’s utility as a medium of exchange.

It is very clear that you have a bias against private-sector credit & spending, and that you wish to see this bias codified into a monetary policy that favors long-term saving.

The gold-standard is the most extreme case of this – since gold is a naturally-deflationary commodity (eg, because gold production has not kept up with per-capita world gold-demand, there will ALWAYS be an increase in the value of gold over time, unless we drastically increase production).

A gold standard ensures economic destruction in a way that even Greece-style ridiculous public debt never can, because it places a CONSTANTLY CONTRACTING hard-limit on the size of an economy unless the government regularly devalues the currency by legislative edict (reduces the amount of gold behind each currency-unit).

But you completely ignore this effect, because your only focus is on the one aspect of money that no one cares about – and that is using money as a store of value.

Ironically, if it were not for panic-buyers and bubble-promoters, GOLD would be a very good *ALTERNATIVE* to money for those who wish to store value. HOWEVER, due to the externalaties associated with gold, it is one of the worst possible choices – mainly because every economic recession produces a gold-bubble – a spike in the value of gold unrelated to sustainable market demand. Those who are ‘storing value’ in gold right now (unless they have been doing so since the 90s) are going to lose their shirts in the next 4 years – just like those who ‘stored value’ in it in 1979.

But because of that, it is a terrible thing to use AS money.

You see, that’s another thing your school of thought misses in trying to moralize economics…

The market provides another way – a way for people who wish to ‘store value’ to be happy, while people who wish to immediately exchange it or borrow against it can also have their way.

That way is for money to be inflated at 3% per year-or-so, and for those who wish to store value to do so via the purchase of price-stable (naturally deflationary) physical goods.

There is absolutely NO NEED for money to be a store of value, because as a medium of exchange, money can be used to PURCHASE things that ARE a store of value.

Ironically, this is the system that our market has freely chosen today – and it WORKS very well.

To contrast, there is no ‘way out’ when monetary policy forces money to be a store-of-value. There is no ‘alternate medium of exchange’ that can replace money, in the way that physical goods can replace it as a store of value.

This is where the allusion to Keynes is wrong – Monetarists don’t support Keynsian stimulus – we support a policy of keeping the money supply large enough to foster continuous economic growth (which means that if the economy grows, the money supply needs to grow in proportion), and view the open-market as the proper vehicle for determining the size of said supply….

In this system,, the Central Bank is a monopolistic manufacturer (of money), not an organization with the power to forcibly create more money by fiat.

The FED can ‘Make’ all the money they want, but if no one buys it, the supply stays the same (That’s what has happened under Obama).

Their power to withdraw money from the market is far more effective (raising the price always produces results, whereas lowering it won’t do any good if there’s no demand), but for obvious reasons (Deflation always kills – it can never be a good thing) this power is used sparingly.
http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

it is an awesome store of value, you just have to have the wisdom to take your profits when the economy begins to improve.

Also, you could purchase gold on a dollar cost averaging and you would well outperform the stock market regardless of the many bubbles over the years.

But as for using it as a currency, you are correct, that is foolish.
Dave_A

My issue with gold as a store-of-value is that it has an extreme volatility, due to non-economic factors that produce wild price spikes.

Now, the smart investor can maneuver around the spikes…. Just like the smart investor can maneuver around stock-market fluctuations….

But in terms of filling the role money once held in the pre-credit-scoring era (eg, being ‘cigar-boxable’), it falls short… For example, anyone who bought gold since 2007, unless they sell in the next year, will likely be underwater for 20 years (just like 1980)….

That said, if it were not for these non-economic externalities causing wild price-swings, gold WOULD be the perfect store of value, due to the production-demand disparity mentioned above.

Right now, gold is more volatile than the US Dollar (which holds a predictable 1-3% depreciation long term).
http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

Monetarism was a direct assault upon Keynes and is not a “form” of it. And the modern day Austrian school should not be lumped in with Rothbard and cranks like Lew Rockwell. Modern Austrians have a great deal of respect for Milton Friedman and a lot of areas of agreement.

A lot of the modern Austrians no longer adhere to a gold standard policy but would prefer free banking.
Dave_A

I have my issues with the ‘free banking only’ viewpoint – HOWEVER they are more complex economically & don’t really fit the flow of discussion on a political site…. That position is more ideologically consistent with true libertarianism, but is not generally found in US political circles (mainly due to the Paulistinians papering over it with the Rothbard/Rockwell version)….

However, my major bone to pick is with the anti-credit ‘Pop Austrians’, ala Ron Paul, who advocate deflation and a forcible return to money as a store of value, either through gold-standardization OR through Congress seizing control of the money supply.

I’m generally a ‘form should follow function’ guy – which means ‘policy should follow the market’ in terms of economics.

And since the market has very obviously & resoundingly chose credit and inflation, then our monetary policy should support the market, not attempt to fight it or constrain it.
http://libertynews.com/ mbecker908

The guy, and a large subset of his followers, are ignorant fruit bats. The remainder of those who are willing to “give him respect” are either stupid, ignorant or both.

Dave has done a great job imploding the Paulista argumentum on economics.
bbjaylive

Not only has Paul made the entire GOP look like a bunch of Randian sociopaths who think “printing money” is evil, he’s made people think that all libertarians are Austrian crackpots who think that destroying the economy for a few years is OK for the sake of ‘sound money’ AND he’s made people think that all Austrians are of the “Reagan was a statist war-mongerer”/”right wing hippies” kind.

His monetary and fiscal policy message has spread so deep .
bbjaylive

Not only has Paul made the entire GOP look like a bunch of Randian sociopaths who think “printing money” is evil, he’s made people think that all libertarians are Austrian crackpots who think that destroying the economy for a few years is OK for the sake of ‘sound money’ AND he’s made people think that all Austrians are of the “Reagan was a statist war-mongerer”/”right wing hippies” kind.

The poison of his monetary and fiscal policy message has spread so deep and wide.
conservativerock5

The free banking era was actually more stable, despite many government interferences that caused bank runs.

The money supply has expanded not as it has needed to, but as the central planners have wanted it to.

Inflation is not a good thing when it is a centrally provoked phenomenon.

The fact is, the Federal Reserve has been the most anti-free market and most destructive force the American economy has ever seen.
Dave_A

From the economic destruction that followed Jackson’s transfer of the national accounts into crony’s pockets…

All the way thru the Fed’s creation.

This isn’t up for debate – it’s recorded, factual history….

Chart of Recessions vs Stock Market

Ignore the stock-market part of the graph, and focus on the grey bars – those are periods of recession/depression/panic (the term has changed through history).

Note that the frequency is HIGHEST in the period from 1850-1913 – the time when the US had the WORST POSSIBLE monetary policy: Free Banking AND a Gold/Silver standard.

Next, we have 1913-1971 – the US now has a central bank, but we are still under gold

Finaly, we have 1972-present.

The graph is very clear – the WORST economic period in terms of stability, was the first one.

The 2nd period was better but not by much

And the most substantial improvement has been since Nixon ended the gold-standard.

Now, this excludes the period between the 1820s & 1850s – which has quite a few more recessions to add to the ‘free-banking’ portion…

But the history is unequivocal – the free-banking period was the most unstable in the history of the industrialized US.
Dave_A

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-09-21/markets/30089410_1_recession-nber-official-end-date
conservativerock5

The Free Banking Era was from 1837-1862

1863-1913 was the Era of national banks. During this period greenbacks were introduced, and the government caused numerous bank runs.

So, your graph(which is very unclear on what it specifies), completely leaves out the free banking era.

Hooah_Mac

The worst part is that he had 40-45% of the convention locked in with the Paulites, and personally told a lot of people in the hall that he wasn’t a Ron Paul guy because he knew he couldn’t win 60% as the Ron Paul guy. Then the first thing he says once he has locked the endorsement is that he STILL supports Ron Paul for President.

He is a public school teacher of moderate intelligence and no ability to respond to any question except with the phrase ECON 101. He is better than Klobuchar, but like most libertarians of the Pauline stripe has little in common with Republicans. His three-legged stool only has one leg, and that one isn’t a solid fiscal conservative platform – just end the fed and go to gold standard – two proposals that are essentially impossible to enact in the real world, even if they are sound policy.

I know I’m not playing well with the folks on the unity train, but this was never about unity. The Pauline motto was “Our way or the highway” – now they want unity after purging thousands of hard-working grassroots republicans from the MN GOP. It is no different than when democrats scream that we won’t compromise if we don’t give them everything they want.

As always I will vote R in November, but that does not mean I will like it. It is a moot point anyway, because Minnesotan voters are overwhelmingly either Socially Moderate/Conservative and Fiscally Liberal(Democrats) or Socially Conservative and Fiscally Moderate/Conservative(Republican). There is a very committed group of libertarians here, but not a large group.

Unless Bills can keep his conservative camouflage going strong, he will have a hard time holding onto the Rs and very small chances of gaining any Ds.

Hooah_Mac

I think your call for those orgs to pour money into this race will fall on deaf ears, but I don’t speak for them. He is not a rounded conservative that they like to support, and unless there is a game-changer here, money spent on the race is futile.
http://libertynews.com/ mbecker908

Hell, he doesn’t play with others period.

Bills snipping this nomination is unfortunate, he’ll lose in a landslide and that will become apparent as soon as he opens his mouth.

I really wish Pete Hegseth would run against him in the primary. Unlike Bills, Pete is the real deal.

Hooah_Mac

I am 110% behind Pete. I was even in his convention introduction video. Primarying contrary to endorsement can be a very risky move politically in MN, but if Pete were to choose to do it, he would have my complete support.

Common_Cents

Paul support making inroads in MN local party structure. What lessons can we learn to improve the conservative position in the party? Why isn’t RS promoting the heck out of conservatives getting involved at the local party level?

Secondly, could the guy be worse than Kloubachar?

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acat

We can hope a Paulistine may evolve in the right direction.

There is zero chance Klobuchar will.

Mew
http://libertynews.com/ mbecker908

nt.
mikeymike143

nutjob paul and his followers are a cancer to the republican party. they are neither conservative nor republican and should be ostracized and shunned like lepers.
Common_Cents

We should be asking ourselves, how did it happen so quickly, and how can we do the same influencing the party and recruiting/nominating solid conservatives.
acat

Just checking.

Mew
http://libertynews.com/ mbecker908

It didn’t happen quickly, Paulbot’s are simply very well organized. Conservatives are lazy.
tnfriendofcoal101368

ewww…it’s like asking me do I prefer arsenic or cyanide with my beef stew. Minnesota offers the choice of a Paulbot or a Kos Troll. I’ll go with the Paulbot.
acat

Note – if your beef stew has skin-on potatoes, odds are you’ve got a little arsenic in there already. Occurs naturally in potatoe skins.

That said, arsenic is the more treatable of the two .. so yeah. Bring on the Paulistine.

Mew
Common_Cents

I’d think if there was a push by conservatives we could have significant control of parties and nominees in a couple years. I don’t think this has been decades in the making.

“conservatives are lazy”, probably right, I guess it isn’t bad enough yet for us to get off our collective duffs. But judging from the relatively small number of people active in local/primaries it really doesn’t take that many people to make a big impact.

I’d just like to see more promotion of this on conservative sites. It is no wonder not one establishment R says one word about precinct politics. They don’t want to be bothered other than your vote.

Why people rip on the candidate now, after most of us not doing anything about it, is pointless. Since the alternative is a worse Kloubachar. She is probably the worst since she flies under the radar, is milquetoast nice, and rubber stamps anything D. It could be tough to beat her since her name recognition in MN from her long time columnist father for the MN star and sickel.

RS

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Kurt Bills is the Republican nominee for Senate in Minnesota

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