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Shot-down at the counter!
“I got turned down. I need a license to carry card. Joke,” texted my brother-in-law Jason to me a couple of weeks ago. Welcome to Massachusetts.
Jason is from Montana, where you can pretty much buy a gallon of milk along with your ammo no questions asked. He knew I was looking for some .22 LR ammo. He spotted a couple of boxes and texted me if I wanted them, hence the “I got turned down” text.
He’s got the card now thanks to “America’s Guest,” as he’s apt to call a politician, for providing the ammunition/motivation..
Get your guns and your training now (See Parts I, II, III, and IV) especially if you live in Massachusetts. Because America’s Guests are not here to serve you.
VIDEO: If you’re living in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, here’s a quick primer on how to get your firearms license. If you’re from a state with more freedom, you can watch this and have a good laugh.
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Cato Institute Fellow Ted Galen Carpenter offers readers a cogent analysis.
It would seem that NATO partisans are the ones who don’t appreciate the role of change in international affairs. To them, preserving the alliance, not maximizing America’s security and well-being, is the highest priority. We should not accept such static thinking. Sixty-seven years is a long time for any policy to remain intact and try to remain relevant. America’s NATO policy is
increasingly failing the most basic tests of relevance and prudence. It is well past time to conduct a comprehensive review and consider even the most drastic option: U.S. withdrawal from the alliance.
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 Two ladies I like are featured in my Friday posts. Here I am referring to the always refreshing Ann Coulter, along with Cato Institute scholar Emma Ashford. Donald Trump could do worse that inviting the two ladies to an informal policy discussion dinner. From Ms. Ashford:
In a political landscape dominated by neoconservative and hawkish candidates, some of Trump’s statements are certainly appealing. He admits that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, a view now shared by a majority of Americans. He decries the costs of nation-building and consistent military intervention abroad.
Trump has also criticized American military spending to defend U.S. allies in NATO and elsewhere around the world. The United States spends the lion’s share of both NATO’s budget, and its operational costs. It is little wonder, perhaps, that Trump’s point resonates with many Americans who wonder why they should be picking up the tab for our some of our wealthiest
allies.
Yet though Trump sometimes advocates more restrained foreign policy ideas, he frequently also expresses extremely hawkish ideas. At his AIPAC speech, Trump pledged to prevent regional aggression by Iran, and promised to dismantle the Obama administration’s nuclear deal. He promises to “knock the hell out of ISIS,” and proposed sending 20,000 to 30,000 troops to fight the
group.
Not only do Trump’s advisers present no clear picture of whether or not he would pursue a more restrained foreign policy, the list is so short and so scattershot that it seems likely Trump is still having substantial difficulties attracting experienced foreign policy advisers.
Unfortunately, greater exposure to Trump’s ideas has not substantially increased our understanding of his foreign policy views. His consistent unpredictability is problematic for the effective and rational conduct of foreign policy.
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 Other than wanting to be the next president of the United States, what do Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, John Kasich, and Ted Cruz have in common? Each
in his or her own way has promised on the campaign trail “to bring our jobs back from China, from Mexico, from Japan, from so many places,” to quote Mr. Trump. But as the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner points out, bringing back jobs in low-end manufacturing is not the answer.
After all, do American parents really aspire to have their children sitting at a sewing machine making shirts? Or do they want their children to become doctors, computer programmers, or technology specialists — good jobs with good futures.
… the single biggest reason that the manufacturing sector has shed so many jobs is that American workers are increasingly productive. Simply put, it takes fewer workers to produce the same thing.
Mr. Tanner relates a story—“apocryphal” though it may be—about Milton Friedman. While touring China, Mr. Milton was shown a team of nearly 100 workers building an earthen dam with shovels.
Friedman pointed out that with a bulldozer, a single worker could create the dam in an afternoon. A Communist official replied, “Yes, but think of all the unemployment that would create.”
“Oh,” said Friedman, “I thought you were building a dam. If it’s jobs you want, then take away their shovels and give them spoons.”
“Trying to preserve low-skilled manufacturing jobs in America today makes little more sense than Friedman’s spoon brigade,” writes Mr. Tanner. Instead, in order to prepare for a vibrant economic future, as starters, Tanner suggests:
- Boost entrepreneurship by cutting taxes and regulations—not by piling on more regulations and taxes, as candidates Clinton and Sanders propose.
- Break the stranglehold that the teachers’ unions have over our schools so that we can educate our youth for future jobs.
- Embrace economic growth as a goal.
Read more from Mr. Tanner here.
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 Former CIA bin Laden unit chief Michael Scheuer explains that Trump has a chance to win over voters to
his position on foreign policy.
Trump already has convinced much of the electorate – the part not seeking free stuff or to live off others’ labor and taxes — that he can undo Obama’s economic disaster. He also has a chance to speak to and win over voters to his positions on foreign policy, positions that would serve their economic and security interests, protect their liberties, and halt the infernal burden of
having their taxes used to pay, not for deficit reduction or America’s many dire domestic needs, but to protect other peoples’ interests, fight other peoples’ wars, and line the pockets of corrupt Third World elites. Common sense – a synonym for America First — has a chance to win in this fall’s election, and, at the moment, Trump has cornered the market on common sense, hands down.
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Are you living an active retirement? Most of my retired clients tell me they have never been busier. That’s why it came as no surprise to me to read this article in the WSJ about the increase in seniors learning how to shoot. And it’s not just seniors.
I reached out to a client whose family runs a highly successful gun shop, range and training center in the South. I wanted to get his take on the article. He said it’s not just seniors who are interested, training is up overall, and has grown markedly over the past 18 months. Here are the five most popular classes he mentioned, in no particular order:
- NRA First Steps
- Evolution of Accuracy
- Fast and Accurate
- Concealed Carry
- Private lessons
Related video:
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 Does any American really need to receive junk mail six days a week from the United States Postal Service? Probably not. Nonetheless, Congress imposes a rigid monopoly on us. As emails have increased and snail mail has deteriorated, the USPS has lost $50
billion since 1970. But as more bill paying, advertising, invitations, and other communications go online, there will be no deterrent to the flow of red ink going to the USPS, writes Chris Edwards, editor of the Cato Institute’s DownsizingGovernment.org.
USPS is losing billions of dollars a year even though it enjoys a range of government-conferred benefits. It has monopolies on first-class mail (letters under 13 ounces) and standard mail (bulk advertising items). It also has a monopoly on access to mailboxes, which is a unique protection among postal systems in the world.
Furthermore, the USPS borrows from the U.S. Treasury at subsidized interest rates, pays no federal or state taxes, is excluded from local zoning laws, and has the power of eminent domain. But even with these advantages, the USPS loses money because Congress prevents it from cutting costs. Congress blocks the company from closing unneeded post office locations, and it has blocked plans to end Saturday
delivery.
The USPS’s costly union workforce is another problem. The company’s worker compensation is substantially higher than for comparable private-sector workers. Collective bargaining agreements—which cover more than four-fifths of the USPS workforce—make it more difficult for management to make cost-saving changes, such as increasing part-time work and introducing further
automation.
Furthermore, unlike private companies,such as FedEx and UPS, the USPS dos not pay taxes, borrow at market rates, or follow all the normal business laws and regulations. Congress needs to free our postal system by privatizing the USPS and repealing its various legal monopolies. Chris quotes former U.S. Postmaster General William Henderson: “What the Postal Service needs now is nothing short of
privatization.” Read more from Mr. Edwards here.
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 National Review’s Charles Krauthammer recently penned an article headed The Four Foreign Policies. I thought Charles,
on balance, explained the foreign policy positions of Trump, Sanders, Cruz and Clinton quite succinctly. Despite my generally favorable review, I questioned Krauthammer’s linking Ronald Reagan to the neocons. I put the question to my friend Chris Preble, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. I also had a question about Clinton and one on Cruz that Chris clarified for me.
Dr. Preble explained, “It’s a common neocon trick to claim that Reagan was one of them. He wasn’t. The neocons hated Reagan for leaving Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing and negotiating arms control deals with Gorbachev. They would have preferred him to double down on a foolish mission in Beirut and held out hope for precipitating regime change in Moscow. Reagan was also much
more even handed toward Israel than they ever would have admitted. Anyway, Cruz isn’t like Reagan. The other thing that CK should state, but won’t, is that of these four he’s closest to Hillary Clinton. But he knows that that wouldn’t sit well with National Review readers.”
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 In the early days of the second Iraq War, Bill Niskanen and Ed Crane wrote that neoconservatism had always been “a movement with a head but no body. One rarely runs into a neocon
on the street.” The other side of that coin is that sometimes heads matter a lot. Thomas Friedman was overstating things–but not entirely wrong–when he told Haaretz in a 2005 interview in Washington, DC that:
I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.
At crucial junctures in history, having small numbers of the right people in the right places can make all the difference. Ask the Bolsheviks. (Or the Mensheviks, for that matter.)
So if someone were to improve the right-of-center foreign policy establishment, it’s worth thinking about the people who would do so and the outlets for which they write.
The publications already exist. The National Interest is a foreign-policy journal friendly to realists of all policy orientations, and whose leadership has grown increasingly disenchanted with both US foreign policy generally and the neoconservative stranglehold on the GOP in particular. The struggle for such a magazine is to remain identifiably Republican at a time when a liberal Democratic president is running a more conservative foreign policy than the conservative commentariat is calling for, but TNI has managed to walk this line well. It deserves the support of right-minded donors, and one would like to see
Republican pols writing for the magazine more often.
A more general interest magazine that could help shape a post-neoconservative GOP is The American Conservative. Founded as an anti-Iraq War magazine for conservatives, TAC has been buffeted by the same forces that have sunk lesser magazines, but has survived through the largesse of a number of different publishers and
donors. Beyond its perestroika role on foreign policy, TAC has also asked heretical questions about politics and economics. Much of the credit for TAC’s quality and survival is due Dan McCarthy, who has helmed the magazine for years. (Full disclosure: I have written for both magazines and consider Dan a friend).
In terms of journalists, Daniel Larison at TAC should win some sort of Defense of Stalingrad medal for his sheer doggedness in defending against the many nutty ideas on the right (and the left). Jim Antle has done good work on foreign policy, while taking care not to lose his Vast Right Wing Conspiracy decoder ring, as has Jack Hunter. Sensible donors should promote public fights between these people and the neoconservatives that have turned the GOP’s foreign policy into such a disaster. Like presidential candidates winning elections, however, the neocons have been smart to duck these debates to
date.
But perhaps the neocons’ run is coming to an end. Consider: We live in an era where it’s no longer an internet meme to joke about how blindingly stupid Bill Kristol is: the Washington Post ran a Style section story detailing how wrong he always is for which Kristol agreed to be interviewed. One can only hope that this arrogance and indifference to truth and learning is a sign of late imperial decline for the leaders of the GOP foreign policy establishment.
Read Parts I, on think tanks and II, on the donor class.
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