I was interested in comparing the price of the ETF vs. the basket of metals a share represents, so I made a calculator for doing so. I haven’t found a way to pull live prices for the metals, so you have to enter those manually (try Kitco Metals. But I was able to pull the live price for GLTR. Let’s see how this works.

Here’s what it looks like:

And here’s a link to the spreadsheet (Excel format) so you can download it yourself. I was hoping I could embed it so you could put in your own numbers, but I guess not.

GLTR Calculator

Others have complained about Johnson’s support for interventionist foreign policy including sending and maintaining US troops overseas, which is far from the LP position. See for example Libertarian Peacenik.

According to Johnson’s April filing with the FEC, his campaign is $150K in debt. That’s a substantial sum for a campaign that raised $62K in April and spent $63K. Libertarians usually believe in fiscal responsibility, and Johnson is not demonstrating that.

But a bigger concern is the Johnson campaign’s selective use of the money it does spend. It was previously reported by others that fundraiser Jonathan Bydlak has sued the Johnson campaign. Turns out that the campaign is paying some consultants on a consistent basis, but for some reason refuses to pay Bydlak.

There are motions pending in a federal court in Virginia and those should be heard later this month. Below is a pdf of Bydlak’s motion for an injunction to keep Johnson from spending the money coming in on the consultants now in favor.

Bydlak Motion

Here are some key quotes:

“GJ2012′s precarious financial position, combined with the preferential and obscure manner in which GJ2012 has been applying its campaign funds, also provide strong evidence that the controlling members of GJ2012–Nielsen, Goodwin, and Kim Blanton–are abusing their powers as GJ2012 officers to benefit some of GJ2012 creditors (i.e., their own companies), at the expense of the rest–including Mr. Bydlak.”

“[T]hey have every incentive to ensure that their own companies are the first in line whenever it is time to cash a paycheck. Consistent with this motive, the Defendants appear to have been engaged in a course of conduct designed to minimize their own exposure while leaving the rest of GJ2012′s creditors, including fundraisers like Mr. Bydlak, to fend for themselves. This inequity is exacerbated by the fact that defendants Nielsen and Goodwin expressly promised Mr. Bydlak in April that his payment processing would receive priority, and that a portion of the contributions would be specifically set aside to make sure that he is paid on time.”

Is this what the LP really wants heading up its campaign in 2012?

We certainly have the largest economy in the world, and the largest military. But that doesn’t seem to be what politicians mean when they say it (if they mean anything at all). Reagan seemed to be talking about our principles:

Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.

Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people.

We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.

Today’s America does not follow that point about government powers being limited to those granted by the people. It may sound nice but government at all levels is growing out of control, and most of us feel we have little or no say.

One might also wonder how much those who say this know about other countries. From a brief review of Reagan’s life, he never lived in any other country. I lived in Japan for a year. I thought then and still do that it’s a great place. Japan and many other countries are better than us in a variety of ways, including mass transit and conservation measures.

The Japanese manage to maintain a large per capita GDP while using far less energy, for example.

The Japanese and French have spectacular train systems. I’ve ridden both the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, literally “train of great speed”) and the 新幹線 (Shinkansen aka the bullet train). They’re awesome, and unlike Chinese high speed trains or American low speed trains, they don’t seem to crash. Japanese people also live a lot longer than we do. I suspect that’s from a healthier diet and a lot of walking. They are usually a step ahead of us on having the latest technology for consumers, and South Korea is also ahead of us these days. Japan also feels extremely safe everywhere, which is one of our greatest failings. There’s nothing in Japan resembling Watts, the South Bronx, or Opa Locka. On the downside most Japanese homes are smaller than my garage, and most of the cars they drive remind me of roller skates.

I’ve also traveled a fair amount. I still remember, imprinted on my brain, when I was visiting a friend in Belgium back in 1989. He introduced me to one of his friends whose first words were: You’re from America? That must be great!

I got that kind of reaction from people in Japan also. So at least some people in other countries think we’re great. But of course, most of those people had never been to the US, so they didn’t really know what life is like here. Maybe they think we all live in Disney World.

In researching for this blog post I came across some other opinions about being the greatest country. For example Slate’s Joseph Stiglitz argued for the tiny island of Mauritius. Considering the small size of the country and their low GDP per capita, I think we can write them off. Michael Kinsley argued in Politico that we’re not the greatest country, but he didn’t really offer an alternative. Perhaps he meant that there is no greatest country, but he didn’t quite say that either.

I became motivated to write this post after reading a recent article in the Wall Street Journal: Canada Beats America, which argued that Canada is doing better on taxes, spending and energy. Canada’s national debt is much lower than ours as a percentage of GDP, and they appear to be going in the right direction (toward a balanced budget). If it wasn’t so cold, I’d give Canada a shot at the greatest country. Similar arguments could be made for Australia.

Some might argue for China because of its large population and strong economic growth in recent decades. Maybe that will continue but my gut tells me their political and economic system is headed for major problems.

Down the road we might see real progress in Brazil or another Latin American country. We’ll see. The truth is there are many great places in the world. I’m partial to the French countryside (but not Paris), Japan, and have a strange fascination with Costa Rica and Panama. A close friend spent a few years in Germany and he really liked it. But for me, the US is still #1. However, our fiscal and monetary policies are disturbing and we are at great risk of an economic collapse. That would have ripple effects across the world, and might make Australia look even better.

What do you think is the greatest country in the world? Why? Please post comments.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article about an NHTSA project to put alcohol detectors in cars, After the party, a car that takes away your keys.

The article has this juicy tidbit:

“Enthusiasm for the potential of alcohol-detection technology is reflected in a proposed federal transportation bill. In it is a measure that would give the NHTSA’s alcohol-detector program $24 million over two years—a sum that could allow the agency by 2013 to equip a fleet of 100 or more cars with prototypes of two types of alcohol detectors. One would measure the alcohol in the driver’s breath. The other would use touch technology to take a reading from the driver’s skin, likely the fingertip used to activate a starter button.”

$24 million to equip 100 cars? That’s $240,000 per car! And this is the proposal. As if government ever delivers anything on budget. For more on this waste of taxpayer money, see the DADSS website. If you read carefully, you’ll realize they’re nowhere close to putting this stuff in the field. See this February 12 DADSS pdf release, for example.

Mostly I meet Republican candidates who say they support small government, so you’d think they’d have some answers. Instead I usually hear crickets chirping.

Yesterday I met a couple Republican candidates for state legislature. One said she’d eliminate the EPA. This is a phony answer. The EPA is a federal agency and the Florida legislature has no power over it.

The other one remembered me from a previous event when he had no answer. Last night he told me that he’d thought about it and he does have an answer: he’d cut fraud and abuse. Waste is another one that’s often used in this kind of answer. It’s phony. Find me a candidate, even a Democrat, who says they support fraud, waste and abuse. Okay, besides Charlie Rangel.

When I ran for Governor of New York, I actually read the state budget. It’s a doozy. And then I proposed real spending cuts, eliminating departments and agencies. You can read some of what I proposed here: Redlich New York State Cuts. I also proposed caps on public sector pay and pensions, which was a central theme of the campaign. Of course my favorite Republican, Ron Paul, also proposes real spending cuts in his Plan to Restore America.

The history of government spending under GOP heroes shows how phony the Republican Party is on this issue. Many Republicans invoke Ronald Reagan as their model. How did he really do?

That’s right. Ronald Reagan increased federal spending. In 1980, the year before he took office, the federal government spent about $600 billion. In 1989, the year of his final budget, the federal government spent $1.14 Trillion. That’s an increase of 93% in 9 years, or over 10% a year.

The budgets, as proposed, are here in pdf format: 1980 Budget   1989 Budget.

The numbers in the proposed budgets are slightly different but either way spending increased dramatically under President Reagan.

Consider spending under another supposedly great Republican, former New York Governor George Pataki.

The year before Pataki took office, NYS spent $52 billion. In his last budget, the state spent just over $100 billion. That’s a 92% increase in 12 years, or roughly 8% a year. You can look at numbers like this for Rick Perry’s time in Texas, Gingrich’s time as Speaker of the House, or Mitt Romney’s in Massachusetts, and you’ll see roughly the same thing. They all increased spending.

Just recently in New York, state assemblyman George Amedore posted a note on Facebook talking about the new budget. The line that got me was this: “Holds the line on spending at two percent.”

A 2% increase in spending is not holding the line. That would be a zero percent increase. Of course a 2% increase is better than an 8% increase. But it’s still not enough.

I’ve met George and like him. That’s true of the other candidates I met recently – most candidates are likeable. But that doesn’t cut it. We voters, Republican, Democrat or other, should demand more of candidates.

Every one of us, every time we meet a candidate, this is the question we should ask: “What spending will you cut?”

You can see this in the media response to a recent report about the 2012 presidential campaign. The “bi-partisan” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget issued a report discussing how the GOP candidates’ proposals would affect the national debt. In short, for three of the four candidates, their plans would dramatically increase the national debt. Only one candidate has a plan that reduces the debt. As the graph shows (click it to see in full size), national debt would dramatically increase under the plans proposed by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, while only Ron Paul would reduce it.

This became a significant story in the news, but did not get the attention it truly deserves. The biggest difference in the candidates is that Ron Paul has proposed substantial and specific government spending cuts.

So how was the spending issue addressed by the media and the political elites?

Consider the Wall Street Journal‘s take:

Alice Rivlin, a committee board member and former head of the Congressional Budget Office, said it was unrealistic to expect candidates to be too specific about how they would restrain spending growth, but she worried candidates are being specific about tax-cut proposals that would worsen the deficit.

“It’s too much, at this stage in the campaign, to ask campaigns to give you a finished proposal with all the details,” she said. “But it’s not too much to ask them to be fiscally responsible.”

Think of the questions a real journalist might have asked Ms. Alice Rivlin:

Why is it unrealistic?

At what stage of the campaign should they give you a finished, detailed proposal?

How can they be fiscally responsible without providing details?

This media/political elite attitude enables candidates to be vague about government spending cuts. Today I had the joy of reading Rick Santorum’s Economic Freedom Agenda in the Journal, which has this beauty of a paragraph:

I’ll propose spending cuts of $5 trillion over five years, including cuts for the remainder of fiscal year 2013. I’ll propose budgets that spend less money each year than prior years, and I’ll reduce the nondefense-related federal work force by at least 10%, without replacing them with private contractors.

“I’ll” is usually a contraction meaning “I will.” Santorum formed a presidential exploratory committee in April of 2011, some ten months ago. He will propose spending cuts? He’s had four years in the House, followed by twelve years in the Senate, and four years now as a lobbyist. By now he should have a pretty good idea of what spending he’d cut. When will he tell us what cuts he’d make?

Also interesting is the questionable math. He says he’ll cut $5 trillion over 5 years. Then he says each budget will spend less than prior years. In the world most of us live in, cutting $5 trillion over 5 years would mean cutting about a trillion a year, so it should be obvious that each budget would spend less than prior years.

But maybe what he really means is the Washington insider version of spending cuts, which means a reduction in future increases. This relies on another fiction of the media and the political elites – baseline budgeting.

So when Santorum says he’ll cut $5 trillion, does he mean reducing spending by $5 trillion, or reducing future increases by $5 trillion? Don’t worry folks. Alice Rivlin reassures the media and the candidates that they don’t have to be specific.

Ms. Rivlin’s choice, President Obama, hasn’t proposed any significant spending cuts three years into his first term. So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.

If you’re reading this, and you’ve gotten this far, you should demand that any candidates be specific about their spending plans. And tell the media you want them to ask specific questions. Don’t let Alice Rivlin and the other DC insiders hide the truth from us.

In general, religious leaders seem to support big government. I see this in our current and previous synagogues, where rabbis support President Obama’s expansion of government involvement in health care.

Underlying this is a sound religious attitude supporting charity. Most religions advocate helping the poor. But does religious doctrine really advocate that this be done through government?

Religions advocate helping the poor through charity. Typically members of the religion give money to their church, temple, mosque, or related institutions. The religious institutions then provide hospitals, schools, shelters, food, etc. to those in need. “Historically, hospitals were often founded and funded by religious orders or charitable individuals and leaders.” (Wikipedia on Hospitals)

Government, by contrast, takes money from people through involuntary taxes. And in general government does not deliver help through religious institutions.

The unpleasant truth? Big government is bad for religion and religious institutions.

There is substantial evidence that government involvement in charity crowds out private giving. In other words, when government does more, people give less to charity.

Also, when government takes on these roles, it diminishes the importance of religion. Government in effect takes the place of religion, or even becomes the religion. The leaders can become so powerful that they develop a cult of personality. North Korea is a present day example. Past examples include Mao in China, Stalin in Russia, and Hitler in Nazi Germany. Marx famously referred to religion as the opiate of the masses.

There are stark differences between religions and government in how they help people. Religions tend to operate on a very local level. The work is mostly done by volunteers or workers willing to work for less money because of their affinity with the religious mission. Fraud is rare because things happen on a local level and the volunteers and workers share a common interest in helping those in need. And through providing services to the needy, religions are able to spread their religious message and values.

Government inherently tends toward centralization. Decisions are made at the national level rather than locally. Volunteers are rare in government “charity”, replaced by highly paid bureaucrats. Government employees are typically concerned with moving up the ladder, increasing their power and pay, and especially their pensions and other benefits. And of course, government in the US is prohibited from spreading any kind of religious message or values.

What a surprise then, that atheism is more common in Europe than in the US. Europe has had bigger government for longer, and is often touted by big government liberals as a shining example of government run health care. As long as you ignore the looming Greek healthcare catastrophe.

Most government insiders view religion with contempt, most famously shown by then-candidate Obama’s reference to people clinging to guns or religion (in the audio below around 40 seconds in):

While I am a registered Republican, this is not a Democrat vs. Republican issue. George W. Bush dramatically increased government involvement in schools with No Child Left Behind and in health care with Medicare Part D.

Typically support for big government comes mainly from Democrats and liberals. But insiders of both parties expand government because it increases their power.

It always amazes me that liberals don’t see why big government is particularly bad from their perspective – because liberals aren’t always in charge. If you’re a liberal, do you really want someone like Rick Santorum in charge of a powerful federal government? President Obama has been accused of abusing the power of the executive branch. Do you really like the precedent this sets for the next time the GOP wins the White House?

When does big government become dangerous to the people? What are the warning signs?

The Obama administration is developing a plan to fly combat drones over US territory. Hmm …

While much of the responses I received were genuine, there were also some that were suspicious. They used the same language and nasty attacks. And this leads to one of the things that’s wonderful about the web. You can be a troll if you like but trolls leave tracks. This blog uses WordPress, and its comment feature indicates the IP address used by the commenter and time of posting to the comment narrator (me).

Here are some comments from purportedly different people using the same IP address:

HP — pederson.howard@yahoo.com — 69.64.222.154 — Submitted on 2011/12/28 at 8:08am
Shouldnt use your column to settle scores. Sounds like Mr. Stone is in your wheelhouse BIGTIME!

Smoke — Rogermanis@hotmail.com — 69.64.222.154 — Submitted on 2011/12/28 at 7:42am
Warren—this is just sour grapes. If the NY Libertarians had nominated Kristin Davis insrtead of you thay would have won 50,000 votes and wouldn’t have to petition their way onto the ballot. You are the one who hurt the party.

Joe paine — Joepaine1@hotmail.com — 69.64.222.154 — Submitted on 2011/12/28 at 7:39am
Warren– You make a living getting drunk drivers who kill people behind the wheel for a living off. Who are you to criticize anyone?

Not only are they from the same IP address (in bold), but they were also posted within about 30 minutes from each other. Here’s another couple:

Susan Greenberg — susangreenberg88273@aol.com — 99.58.192.216 — Submitted on 2011/12/27 at 4:15pm
I read what you wrote defending older men have sex with teen age girls. It was perverted. I would not want my daughters anywhere near you. I’m glad you moved to Florida. The children of the Albany area are safer because of it.

Seth Greenberg — dvader2283@aol.com — 99.58.192.216 — Submitted on 2011/12/27 at 4:10pm
Warren – didn’t you publically call your opponent Kristin Davis a whore ? Didn’t you refuse to share the NYLP voting delegate lists and convention rules with any other candidate before the NY convention? Who is guilty of dirty tricks? Look in the mirror.

Again with the same IP address. And the comments were posted 5 minutes apart. There were also two other comments posted within 12 minutes after the last one, using different IP addresses but similar language and form of attack (references to my work as a defense lawyer, or to Kristin Davis, who is not even mentioned in the blog post).

One other piece of evidence is the purported e-mail addresses. I searched for them on the web and can’t find a single one of them. Here’s a Google search for Pederson’s:

If these were real people using their real e-mail addresses, you would think at least one of them would show up on a Google search. But they’re not real people. It’s all probably one or two cowardly people using fake names to attack others while remaining hidden.

Here’s two more:

DontMissYou — loyalopposition@gmail.com — 67.241.174.81 — Submitted on 2011/12/27 at 3:45pm
Gee if the NY Libertarians had had a fair and open convention to nominate a candidate for Governor perhaps Roger Stone wouldn’t have killed your chances to get 50,000 votes and put the Libertarians on the map. Instead you used gestapo tactics and refused to share delegate lists with the other candidates. You reap what you sow. Even in South Florida.

PeteSzabo — newyorklives@gmail.com — 67.241.174.81 — Submitted on 2011/12/27 at 3:43pm
I read what you wrote defending older men having sex with teen age girls. It was perverted. I would not want my daughters anywhere near you. I’m glad you moved to Florida. The children of the Albany area are safer because of it.

These two were posted from the same IP address, two minutes apart. And notice how the second one is exactly the same, word for word, as the “Susan Greenberg” comment. And another comment (not posted) used the same language as “DontMissYou”.

The image below shows some of what I see in the WordPress comment moderation screen. Please note there were two more that I could not fit onto the screen. Click on the picture to see it in a larger size:

For an excellent discussion of tracking trolls, see Chantal Stained Glass.

Short story, from her perspective: Her job did not include health insurance. She was diagnosed with tumors in her uterus. Then she couldn’t get insurance coverage for this pre-existing condition. So she favors Obamacare. For a fuller version of her side, see her blog post: I am Obamacare.

One key detail she does not mention: While her job did not include health insurance, she chose not to pay for health insurance out of her own pocket.

Now she complains that she can’t get insurance for this pre-existing condition. But this is a misunderstanding of what the word insurance means.

Please consider this analogy:

Her job didn’t include car insurance, and she did not buy any on her own. She got in an accident and the car was damaged. She went to a car insurance company, and they refused to pay for the pre-existing damage to her car. And this was a nice insurance company, so they didn’t laugh at her.

The more reasonable version of pre-existing conditions is where you have a condition that makes you more likely to suffer certain diseases, but you have no symptoms or evidence of such disease yet. That creates an adverse selection problem – the people who are likely to get sick are more likely to buy insurance, and they cost more to insure so that drives the price of insurance up. Then the people who are less likely to get sick are less likely to buy insurance. Removing them from the risk pool increases the total risk, further driving prices up. This is an area where some economists argue, somewhat credibly, for government intervention to address this form of market failure.

But the current discussion about Obamacare and pre-existing conditions is not about adverse selection or “insurance”, as the photo above shows. Insurance is about covering for the risk that something might happen, not about covering for something that did happen.

This part of Obamacare is about bailing out people who chose not to pay for health insurance. And the blame does not fall only on President Obama and the Democrats. Most Republican insiders are just as bad. Government bails out people who did not buy adequate insurance for floods. It has bailed out banks, car companies, and so on.

One of the main reasons I support Ron Paul is that he clearly does have principles (following the Constitution, and supporting liberty), and I generally share those principles.

Mitt Romney does have principles but not in the same way. Looking especially at his political career, Romney focuses on representative democracy and sound management.

The representative democracy principle is the source of his flip-flopping on issues. Seeing himself as Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney was pro-choice because his constituents were pro-choice. Once he started running for the Republican nomination for President, his constituency became pro-life and so did Romney. The same analysis explains his changing positions on universal health insurance, gun rights/control, climate change, and so on.

If Romney becomes President he would view his constituency not as just Republicans, but the whole nation. As such, he is unlikely to do much about the controversial issues that trouble Democrats. Instead, he would focus his presidency on his second principle.

Mitt Romney’s greatest strength in the campaign is his history of competence in business, in saving the Salt Lake City Olympics, and as Governor of Massachusetts. At his core he is running for President because he believes he would do a better job of managing the federal government than any of his GOP opponents, and better than Barack Obama. With the exception of Ron Paul, I have to agree.