America will break up. I don’t wish for it. It’s not a solution. It’s just a fact. Look at what’s happening culturally, politically, socially. Masks. Forced vaccinations. Massive tax hikes. Inconceivable government spending, debt and bankruptcy–FOR NO REASON. Lockdowns looming every cold and flu season. Elimination of fossil fuels. No control of the borders. When you consider that millions of people WANT all this, while millions of others cannot tolerate any of it — these are impossible, irreconcilable differences. It can’t be fixed. I believe America will end up broken not in two, but in multiple pieces.

I hope it can be peaceful. But when I look at violent threats against citizens (millions who voted for Trump) coming from Biden, from the head of the U.S. military and much of the Congress — I just don’t see how this ends well. The trigger for it all? Escalation of censorship, by some partnership between Big Tech and our hard leftist government; OR gun confiscation. Or both. The break will come with the final nail in the coffin for the First or Second Amendments. It’s fitting, at least, for a nation once based on the rights of man.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Memes from my Twitter and Facebook feeds over the last several days:

The only people protesting freedom are those who live in freedom.

If you were ill, would you go to Dr. Fauci for treatment?

You have NOTHING in common with the Democratic Party if you are a freedom-loving American.

With inflation returning, will the millions living on permanent unemployment 35K/year be getting a raise soon?

Hate speech? Absolutely.
I HATE tyranny, irrationality and stupidity.
Because I LOVE truth, beauty and freedom.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

America has so many regulations that today, often the only way to do something new, to create something great, to (SET IATL)prosper is to ignore rules.

Minutes before SpaceX launched a rocket, the government told the company that the launch would violate its license.

SpaceX launched anyway.

CEO Elon Musk says that the Federal Aviation Administration has “a broken regulatory structure” and that “there is simply no way that humanity can become a spacefaring civilization without major regulatory reform.”

But reform isn’t likely.

While businesses must constantly adjust to survive, once bureaucrats create regulations, they have no incentive to repeal them, ever. Instead, they add hundreds of new ones every year.

Musk complains that government “can overregulate industries to the point where innovation becomes very difficult. The auto industry used to be a great hotbed of innovation … but now there’s so many regulations that are intended to protect consumers. … Regulation for cars could fill this room.”

So, Musk broke rules to make Tesla the success it is. He knew he couldn’t innovate if he obeyed all of them. He’s flaunted the rules of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, even tweeting that SEC stands for “Suck Elon’s … ”

So far, he’s gotten away with it.

So have a few others.

In my latest video, Adam Thierer, author of “Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance,” explains why rule-breakers are the best hope for innovation.

When 23andMe came out with genetic testing by mail,” he says, “They didn’t get a permission slip from the Food and Drug Administration. They just started providing that service.”

Once the bureaucrats noticed, they ordered 23andMe to stop offering health insights based on genes.

“The product was off the market for over a year. That stopped genetic testing by other companies, too,” says Thierer. “Smaller players saw what the government did and said, ‘I don’t want that to happen to me.’” This delayed innovation for years.

“Maybe the only way to succeed today is to break the rules,” I suggest.

“Yes,” says Thierer. “Just to go out and try doing it.”

A group of parents whose children have diabetes did that. They developed software that helps people track blood sugar levels.

“Their hashtag is, ‘#WeAreNotWaiting,’” says Thierer. “What are they not waiting for? For the Food and Drug Administration to approve new insulin monitoring devices. Instead, they built them themselves. These devices were better than regulatory approved devices.”

But it only happened because they had the courage to do it without permission.

“Innovations come out of nowhere,” Thierer points out. “The problem is law sometimes blocks all of that and says, thou shall not until you get a permission slip. That’s the death of entrepreneurialism.”

Ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft prospered only because they didn’t ask for permission; they just created ride-sharing apps. By the time sleepy bureaucrats noticed and took steps to regulate Uber and Lyft to death, the company had so many satisfied customers that politicians were afraid to crush them.

Some regulation is useful. The alternative isn’t zero rules. “If a product is dangerous,” says Thierer, “it can be recalled. You can be sued. But don’t treat innovators as guilty until proven innocent.”

It’s easier to see how absurd regulators can be when you look at old regulations.

In 1982, after Sony’s Walkman came out, a New Jersey town banned wearing them while walking. “You couldn’t wear headphones because they would be a danger to yourself!” laughs Thierer. “Sometimes, laws stop making sense. Governments need to adapt.”

COVID-19 persuaded some governments.

Suddenly, it was OK if private companies made virus tests, if nurses and doctors practiced in other states, if doctors used telemedicine without obsessing about stupid privacy rules, if liquor companies made hand sanitizer, etc.

“All sorts of people started doing really interesting entrepreneurial things to try to just help each other out,” says Thierer.

“Those laws needed to change,” Thierer concludes, “But most changed only because people evaded the system.”

John Stossel

Perhaps the BIGGEST story of the Biden regime to date is the decision of Pelosi and her comrades in Congress to institute a nationalized police force.

They’re doing it by massively expanding the budget of the U.S. Capitol Police.

The U.S. Capitol Police exist to guard the Capitol building. That’s it. But now their powers and reach are quietly being expanded to Florida, California and potentially many other states.

This is more than just one more national police agency, to spy on citizens and do who knows what else to “prevent another January 6.” It’s an unaccountable monstrosity in the making. Note just one special feature of the U.S. Capitol Police: Unlike other federal policing agencies, they only answer to Congress — not to the people they’re policing. When their only jurisdiction was the physical U.S. Capitol building, that may make sense. But now their powers will go throughout the land, where they’re free to do anything they please to “prevent violence against members of Congress.” For example, the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to them. They are, quite literally, above the law — while enforcing whatever (Democratic) members of Congress feel, on a given day, to actually BE the law.

A police officer in Minneapolis, or any other town or city, can be prosecuted and convicted (guilty or not) for whatever he does to a citizen in that city. But a member of the U.S. Capitol Police does not have nearly the same accountability. And if they’re doing whatever they wish in the name of “preventing domestic terrorism” … well, they’ve got a total green light. Remember: There are consequences of rigged elections with only one party in charge of the federal government potentially forever. And this is one of them.

Such is the arbitrary nature of a dictatorship. Stop pretending we are not living in one. It’s all in place. Right now. And if you think the Supreme Court (which cannot possibly take on every case) stands ready to defend us against this national police force, you’re giving a lot more credit to most of the conservatives on the Supreme Court (including Trump’s 3 appointees) than they have earned in their handling of cases to date.

It’s much worse than whatever you might find to criticize about Homeland Security, the clearly politicized FBI, and all the rest. If we aren’t all libertarians now, then I don’t know what else to say other than: Welcome to the dictatorship. Because a secret police force run by one party in charge (thanks to rigged elections) is as defining an attribute of a dictatorship as censorship itself.

From Reason magazine: “The department does not need to become yet another unaccountable intelligence agency involved in the dubious and often nakedly political project of conducting widespread surveillance on the American people. Opening field agencies and monitoring “threats to members of Congress” are actions that dilute the Capitol Police’s very clear mandate to guard the Capitol building. The FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Homeland Security, and CIA are already empowered to investigate threats to political leaders; the federal government does not need to hire additional spymasters for this purpose, especially given that the agencies burdened with doing so have tended to violate the rights of innocent Americans.

But make no mistake: The Capitol Police has every intention of becoming just like the FBI and the NSA.”

Good luck, comrades. The punk-fascist-socialist-snowflakes are totally in charge now. And they’ve got guns.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The great thing about our freedom-based economic system is that the government doesn’t have to do much at all in order for the people to prosper and the economy to grow. Just sit back and watch the people create businesses, put each other to work, and provide for every imaginable human need.

But we now have a government in the hands of people who hate America and hate its freedom-based system. The current administration is actively working to undermine the American economy and advance the interests of our geopolitical adversaries. In no area is this more true than the field of energy. In this field, the Biden Administration came in with the explicit goal of undermining American energy production. Indeed if an administration wanted to undermine American energy prosperity as much as possible and comparably benefit our adversaries, it is difficult to think of anything it would do different from what the Biden Administration is doing.

During most of my adult life, “energy independence” has been a bipartisan goal throughout the federal government. That goal was actually achieved under President Trump. Within just a few months, Biden has undone that achievement. The administration has made no secret of its goals to reduce U.S. energy production of the things that work (i.e., fossil fuels) and to drive up their price. Let’s just make a small list of key actions in furtherance of those goals:

-On his first day in office, Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, intended to bring some 800,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Canada into the U.S.

-The next day, Biden suspended all permitting of oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters.

-Biden’s EPA then set in motion the reversal of Trump Administration loosening of rules on methane emissions in the process of producing oil and gas. These tightened Biden restrictions have the effect of increasing the cost of production.

-Currently in the works are rules from the SEC to require extensive new disclosures by energy producers (and others) of supposed “climate”-related risks.

These are just examples of an overall hostility to fossil fuel energy development, specifically intended to have the effect of making energy projects more difficult and more expensive to develop. And so far, the government’s actions are rapidly accomplishing their intended goals:

-The price of a barrel of WTI crude oil has jumped from $53.30 on January 20 (Inauguration Day) to $74.56 yesterday. Crude oil prices are currently at a six year high.

-The average price of a gallon of gasoline at the pump has risen from $2.42 in January 2021 to $3.17 in June, according to EIA data.

OPEC members and Russia are the obvious candidates to step in to take advantage of the price increases, but it seems that those parties are currently having some kind of stand-off as to who gets how much of a quota when production goes up. From the Wall Street Journal, July 6:

[A] squabble between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over quotas is blocking an agreement [to lift production].

Do you think that a competent American administration might want to see American production go up at such a time? Wrong:

A White House spokesperson on Monday said it is urging OPEC and its allies [including Russia] to quickly come up with a compromise “that will allow proposed production increases to move forward.” The Administration is worried that higher gas prices could undermine Mr. Biden’s climate agenda and spending plans.

In lieu of energy independence, we are now seeing imports from Russia reach highs not seen for ten years. From S&P Global, April 16:

Imports of Russian oil, which consists mainly of fuel oil feedstocks and some crude, recently reached a 10-year high as US refineries continue to ramp up runs as the economy starts to recover from COVID-19. Russian oil imports as a share of US total oil imports hit a record high of 8% in January 2021, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration, up from 4% during 2018.

It’s hard to imagine a more counter-productive set of policies than what the Biden Administration is implementing under the rubric of supposedly “fighting climate change.” What they are actually doing is empowering the very worst actors on the world stage, while having no effect whatsoever on the “climate.”

Francis Menton