Alexander Dugin has Vladimir Putin’s ear. Dugin is perhaps Russia’s biggest promoter of Eurasianism, a philosophy that is powerfully expansionist. Dugin sees Russia much bigger than it is today and is a champion of expanding further in the Ukraine. Dugin’s philosophy is anti-Western, anti-liberal, and totalitarian in nature.  Alexander Dugin’s primary enemy—the United States. Foreign Affairs has done all Americans a great service by succinctly laying out the Eurasianism (expansionist) philosophy of Alexander Dugin. Any American laboring under an “it’s business as usual” in Russia is in for a serious wake-up call.

Like the classical Eurasianists of the 1920s and 1930s, Dugin’s ideology is anti-Western, anti-liberal, totalitarian, ideocratic, and socially traditional. Its nationalism is not Slavic-oriented (although Russians have a special mission to unite and lead) but also applies to the other nations of Eurasia. And it labels rationalism as Western and thus promotes a mystical, spiritual, emotional, and messianic worldview.

But Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism differs significantly from previous Eurasianist thought. First, Dugin conceives of Eurasia as being much larger than his predecessors ever did. For example, whereas Savitskii believed that the Russian-Eurasian state should stretch from the Great Wall of China in the east to the Carpathian Mountains to the west, Dugin believes that the Eurasian state must incorporate all of the former Soviet states, members of the socialist block, and perhaps even establish a protectorate over all EU members. In the east, Dugin proposes to go as far as incorporating Manchuria, Xinxiang, Tibet, and Mongolia. He even proposes eventually turning southwest toward the Indian Ocean.

In order to include Europe in Eurasia, Dugin had to rework the enemy. In classical Eurasianist thought, the enemy was the Romano-Germanic Europe. In Dugin’s version, the enemy is the United States. As he writes: “The USA is a chimerical, anti-organic, transplanted culture which does not have sacral state traditions and cultural soil, but, nevertheless, tries to force upon the other continents its anti-ethnic, anti-traditional [and] “babylonic” model.” Classical Eurasianists, by contrast, favored the United States and even considered it to be a model, especially praising its economic nationalism, the Monroe Doctrine, and its non-membership in the League of Nations.

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Becky and I are familiar with the Island Creek success story because good friends of ours live in Duxbury, MA and hang-out with the founder and CEO Skip Bennett. If you like oysters, then you’ll love Island Creek Oysters. What’s great about Skip’s incredible story is that it was his desire for independence that drove him to success. I think every small business owner and entrepreneur can relate to Skip. Here’s a recent profile on him and Island Creek by Under Current News:

Before the knuckly-shelled morsels from Island Creek Oysters make it onto the white plates of establishments such as the French Laundry, they start out in the chilly, briskly swirling waters of Duxbury Bay in Massachusetts, where founder and CEO Skip Bennett began not only his life but also his career.

“I love the independence of it,” Bennett told Undercurrent News, leaning back in his office chair, towards a window overlooking the silvery bay. “I loved being outside, being on the water.”

Today, keeping up with his restaurants, online sales, retail store, sourcing from other farms, hatchery operations and direct distribution channels is enough to keep Bennett busy. But in the beginning, he risked everything for the opportunity to make his own business on the water work.

Drawn to the water through some magnetic pull, Bennett started fishing for shellfish in High School and continued in college. After college, the venture became less attractive as its volatility set in. Hurricane Bob hit in 1991, wiping out the mussel population in the bay, and his job dried up with it.

“It took several years before they came back,” Bennett reflected. “At that point, I could picture myself doing mussels for years, then having to paint houses for three years, but that’s not the life I wanted to lead.”

He had scraped by on earnings that were barely enough to buy groceries, while hearing of oyster growers vacationing in Florida, and he started to get curious.

His foray into farming started with mussels. Led by passion, he scraped the knowledge he needed to get by through tips from existing farmers, but just as volumes began to reach a comfortable level in the mid-1990s, a parasite wiped out his farm.

“At that point, I bought oyster seed,” Bennett said.

At the time, he did not know if oysters would grow in the bay, but he pushed his decision forward fast. This was before the Internet, notes Bennett, so he gleaned information through networking with other oyster farmers inside and outside Massachusetts to gather tips and tricks, and reading up on farming. By 1995, he was finally putting oysters on the bottom of the bay, hoping for a good grow-out.

The venture proved challenging, and by the end of the 1990s, “I had so many loans,” Bennett confesses. “We used to joke, ‘what’s one more credit card? We were either going to go broke or we were going to make it.”

Make it they did. Island Creek’s oysters now appear on menus nation-wide, including the French Laundry — a restaurant world authority on gourmet food — which references the Island Creek brand on its menu. Their oysters also crop up at culinary events such as the Boston Food and Wine Expo, where they were featured this year in an oyster and wine pairing.

Before all this happened, the pressure in the early 2000s was to get production volume up.

“We really didn’t worry about demand too much,” Bennett said. “Then, 9/11 happened, and for months we couldn’t sell oysters.”

The setback hit many businesses seen to be in the non-essential category at the time, but it did not last. Back then, there were only a handful of people selling oysters, and chefs were starting to add oysters to menus and finding there just weren’t many suppliers around.

With interest in food origin taking off, Bennett’s venture sparked an immediate connection with Eric Ripert, a famous chef for one of the most celebrated and busy restaurants in New York, Le-Bernardin, when Bennett cold called his kitchen.

“He was so blown away that there was an oyster farm that wanted to sell him oysters [directly],” Bennett said. “So I realized this farm to table movement was a big deal.”

Seemingly starved for supply, Ripert knew exactly what size and depth of shell he wanted to order.

Bringing new meaning to ‘vertically integrated’

Bennett’s aim to establish a degree of control over his career, which eventually launched Island Creek, has done nothing but grow since the urge first struck. Today, Island Creek Oysters is one of very few oyster farmers that have cropped up along the East Coast in the last couple decades to have its own broodstock program, and its business has been growing every year since its inception 18 years ago.

During that time, the company has gone from selling to just wholesalers to now selling exclusively direct to restaurants and retailers, in addition to running its hatchery and its own restaurants in Boston, Massachusetts, an hour away.

It also recently established a retail store in Duxbury, where it sells the same products it distributes — its own oysters, as well as those it sources from growers up and down the East Coast, as well as from Taylor Shellfish on the West Coast.

The company’s hatchery is four years old at this point, bringing depth to Island Creek’s realms of knowledge. It is sharing that knowledge with others through its foundation, the Island Creek Oysters Foundation, which has issued publicly available annual reports since 2011 detailing its work to get aquaculture off the ground in regions of need, such as Haiti and Zanzibar. Most of the money spent on such projects comes from events the company puts on.

Marine Le Pen’s far right Front National (FN) party just made historic gains in France. Now Front National (FN) looks to tie in with other like-minded European protest parties like UKIP for the European elections. The goal will be to send a strong anti-immigration, anti-Brussels message. Here you read about the surge of the far right.

The leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Nigel Farage, has made European elections a priority in his bid to impose his views on the United Kingdom, which will open a new chapter in the battle of wills with Brussels. They are also a key objective for the True Finns and France’s Front national (FN), as they are for Beppe Grillo in Italy, and SYRIZA, Greece’s main opposition party. All of these groups are hoping to be the focus of a protest vote, which is more pronounced in EU polls. “European elections have traditionally favoured marginal parties,” explains political scientist Dominique Reynié. “They are characterised by proportional representation and a high level of abstention, especially among moderate voters.”

The ingredients of the protest cocktail are well known: immigration, bureaucracy and austerity. And at times they can form a highly volatile mix. The controversy in France over the Roma has shown that immigration – to Europe and also within the EU – will loom large in the campaigns. The question of migration is the stock and trade of the far right in countries as far apart as Denmark and Greece, as well as in the Netherlands, Austria and France.

The issue has also been enthusiastically adopted by the Eurosceptics of UKIP and Germany’s newly created anti-euro party Alternative for Germany (AfD). For a section of the European population that is apprehensive about the crisis, free movement of labour is seen as menace to employment. Romanian and Bulgarian workers have come to represent a threat that used to be embodied by the dreaded Polish plumber.

Milton Friedman knew what the answer to growth and prosperity was. And today Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell is following in Friedman’s steps with Mitchell’s golden rule on spending. Mitchell explains that it is the size of government that matters above all else because it tells citizens how much national income is being redistributed and reallocated by Washington. Mitchell suggests not fixating on deficits and debt. Instead, Dan advises that Americans must ensure that the size of government spending over time grows at a slower rate that does the private economy. As a model, Dan Mitchell looks to the voter-imposed Swiss spending cap that successfully went into effect early last decade. Here is Dan’s analysis in detail. A true small government politician like Senator Rand Paul will find Mr. Mitchell’s research the perfect template for success.

The current debate between advocates of “austerity” and “growth” is frustrating for anyone who supports limited government. Austerity folks assert that deficits are economic poison and that balanced budgets, largely achieved with higher taxes, should be the goal of fiscal policy. So-called growth advocates believe more government deficit spending will boost economic performance.

Both miss the point. What matters, as Milton Friedman taught us, is the size of government. That’s the measure of how much national income is being redistributed and reallocated by Washington. Spending often is wasteful and counterproductive whether it’s financed by taxes or borrowing.

Rather than fixating on deficits and debt, I suggest another goal: Ensure that government spending, over time, grows more slowly than the private economy. Evidence from economies around the world shows this is the best path to bring down deficits and nurture prosperity.

“What matters, as Milton Friedman taught us, is the size of government.”

Call it the golden rule of fiscal policy. Here’s how it would work in the United States. The White House projects nominal GDP will climb 4.7% annually over the next 10 years, while the Congressional Budget Office estimated average growth of 4.5% over that time period. The golden rule simply requires that the burden of government spending climb at a slower rate. Even if the federal budget grew 2% each year, about the rate of projected inflation, that would reduce the relative size of government and enable better economic performance by allowing more resources to be allocated by markets rather than government officials.

A golden rule has several advantages over fiscal proposals based on balanced budgets, deficits or debt control. First, it correctly focuses on the underlying problem of excessive government rather than the symptom of red ink. Second, lawmakers have the power to control the growth of government spending. Deficit targets and balanced-budget requirements put lawmakers at the mercy of economic fluctuations that can cause large and unpredictable swings in tax revenue. Third, spending can still grow by 2% even during a downturn, making the proposal more politically sustainable.

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War Dog House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is frothing at the mouth. He’s pushing his white paper on “The Imperial Presidency”. But when it comes to expanded presidential powers and the appropriate role for government, Cantor and the establishment GOP should look in the mirror. Cato’s Gene Healy points this out in his weekly Washington Examiner column:

In his imperial parade of horribles, Cantor finds room for “withholding critical information about counterfeit goods”–but says nothing about major executive power abuses like illegal wars and dragnet domestic surveillance.

There’s a reason for that. Rep. Cantor, truth be told, is rather sweet on the Imperial Presidency. As he sees it, the problem with Obama’s Libyan war wasn’t its lack of congressional authorization–it was that the president wasn’t aggressive enough. Cantor’s for a more aggressive approach to Syria, a more aggressive approach to Iran–a more aggressive approach to aggression. He’s even given to quoting President Lyndon Baines Johnson‘s foreign policy wisdom.

And when Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., moved to defund the National Security Agency‘s bulk collection of innocent Americans’ calling records, Cantor threatened to kill the bill on a procedural technicality.

Ninety-four House Republicans later voted to end the program; Cantor wasn’t among them. On these core Imperial Presidency concerns, the GOP rank-and-file are better than their leadership. They could use a better standard bearer.

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Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner explains the pitfalls of government dependency and why—when the welfare state becomes ever more unaffordable—it is bad for taxpayers and economic growth. As Margaret Thatcher reportedly said, “Eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

Counting government employees, contractors and recipients of government programs, more than half of Americans receive at least half of their income from the government. And now more Americans are being lassoed into a system that makes it harder for them not to become dependent on government largesse. Read here from Michael Tanner why Obamacare will make this worse.

When critics point out that the policies available on the exchanges are often more expensive than many policies sold before Obamacare, ACA advocates point to subsidies that reduce what many enrollees actually pay. In fact, according to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and outside organizations such as the Kaiser Family Foundation, somewhere in the range of 80 percent, and as many as 83 percent, of those enrolling received a subsidy to help pay for their insurance. That could amount to some 5 to 5.5 million people, depending on how many of those who selected plans actually pay premiums.

And it’s not as though those subsidies are going only to the poor, who otherwise could not afford insurance. Although more generous to those earning 250 percent of the poverty line ($58,875 for a family of four), some level of subsidy is available up to 400 percent of poverty ($94,200 for a family of four). In fact, taking into account various income disregards, some families with even higher incomes could receive a subsidy. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that as many as 700,000 people with incomes more than three times the poverty level will receive a subsidy next year.

Subsidies, of course, do not actually reduce the cost of those insurance plans, but simply shift part of that cost from the purchaser to taxpayers. Moreover, since the Rand Corporation estimates that it’s possible as few as 858,000 enrollees were previously uninsured, millions of Americans who were paying for their own insurance have now moved onto the government dole. While it would generally be unfair to blame people for taking advantage of what is being offered to them, especially when Obamacare may have forced them out of their previous policies involuntarily, it doesn’t change the reality on the ground. The number of Americans dependent on government transfers will increase.

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Americans demanding small government find no home at either the Republican or Democratic parties. Americans are told by Wisconsin rep Paul Ryan that the world is less safe when America doesn’t lead. Ryan offers a plan expanding America’s defense budget. Defense spending? Or is it offense spending? America spends a disproportionate percentage of the Pentagon budget on foreign entanglements and defending countries that would be well served defending themselves. Senator Rand Paul, unlike Representative Paul Ryan, appears to know this. The make America safer answer for all Americans, Republican and Democrat alike, is to be found in the Cato Institute’s Chris Preble’s The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free . Read more about Chris Preble here (I, II, III).

Representative Ryan correctly attacks government spending, however, focusing on entitlement programs. Americans will find the real answer on the despair of big government in Cato Institute senior fellow Dan Mitchell’s research on government spending. Dan Mitchell is perhaps America’s leading scholar on the need to cut the rate of government spending below the growth rate of the private economy.

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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is committed to what Jeff calls Kaizen, the Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement. Read here from Wired magazine how Bezos hopes to get stuff to us all more quickly and cheaply through the use of drones.

“Nineteen years ago, I drove the Amazon packages to the post office every evening in the back of my Chevy Blazer,” Bezos writes in his latest annual letter to shareholders. “My vision extended so far that I dreamed we might one day get a forklift.”

But since then, Amazon has gotten a little more ambitious. After many critics (including us) derided his announcement late last year that his company was testing delivery drones, Bezos also used his letter say that the company is doubling down on this wildly ambitious project. Not only is the delivery drone program happening, but according to the CEO, it’s well underway. “The Prime Air team is already flight testing our 5th and 6th generation aerial vehicles, and we are in the design phase on generations 7 and 8,” he writes.

His bullishness on drones isn’t entirely unfounded, following arecent court ruling that nixed the Federal Aviation Administration’s authority to ban commercial use of small unmanned aerial vehicles. Others are working on drone delivery, and in the distant future, this kind of thing may be commonplace, assuming cultural norms evolve along with the technology. In the near term, it’s hard to see how swarms of small octocopters traveling from warehouses to people’s backyards will actually improve the efficiency of Amazon’s retail operation. But one way or another, the CEO’s letter shows, Amazon will continue to hone a delivery network that pushes the limits of instant gratification.

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