To Occupy Wall Street:

Wall Street couldn’t have done it alone. It takes a government and/or its central bank, the Federal Reserve System, to:

Create barriers to entry for the purpose of sheltering existing banks from competition and radical innovation, then "regulate" for the benefit of the privileged industry;

Issue artificially cheap, economy-distorting credit in order to, among other things, give banks incentives to make shaky but profitable mortgage loans (and also to grease the war machine through deficit spending);

Make it lucrative for banks—and their bonus-collecting executives—to bundle thousands of shaky mortgages into securities and other derivatives with the knowledge that government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other companies, all subject to powerful congressmen looking for campaign contributions, would buy them after a government-licensed rating cartel scores them AAA;

Inflate an unsustainable housing bubble by the foregoing and other methods, enticing people to foolishly overinvest in real estate;

Work closely with lending companies to establish a variety of programs designed to lure people with few resources or bad credit into buying houses they couldn’t afford;

Attract workers to the home-construction bubble, setting them up for long-term unemployment when the bubble inevitably burst;

Implicitly guarantee...

Government power ultimately will be influenced and controlled by those whom the occupiers despise. So, protesters, rail against Wall Street. But rail, too, against its indispensable partner – government, with its unique legal power to wield aggressive force – and realize that the genuine antipode of the system you oppose is the freed market.

One of the worst violations of academic freedom in many years is now occurring at UW-Stout. See here.

Campus police, backed up by spineless administrators, tore door a poster from the door of Professor James Miller in the Department of Theater featuring a quotation from the popular series, "Firefly." In response, Miller put up another poster (shown above) with another quotation from the series. The police also tore it down.

Although Miller is getting full backing from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), he needs reinforcements. A chilling effect has already taken place among many UW-Stout faculty who, rather than showing support for Miller, are now removing anything "controversial" from their doors.

The best place to start, in my view, is to start calling each member of the Board of Regents of the UW System.  Here are their numbers. You can also call , Paul Stauffacher , the chair of the Theater Department and urge him to back his colleague.

In my calls, I stressed that this incident had put a black mark on Wisconsin's reputation as a beacon for academic freedom. Phone calls are best. Start now!

Hat tip to David Hart who refers to the following quote as classical liberal Richard Cobden's "I had a dream" speech.

COBDEN: But I have been accused of looking too much to material interests. Nevertheless I can say that I have taken as large and great a view of the effects of this mighty principle as ever did any man who dreamt over it in his own study. I believe that the physical gain will be the smallest gain to humanity from the success of this principle. I look farther; I see in the Free-trade principle that which shall act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe,—drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace. I have looked even farther. I have speculated, and probably dreamt, in the dim future—ay, a thousand years hence—I have speculated on what the effect of the triumph of this principle may be. I believe that the effect will be to change the face of the world, so as to introduce a system of government entirely distinct from that which now prevails. I believe that the desire and the motive for large and mighty empires; for gigantic armies and great navies—for those materials which are used for the destruction of life and the desolation of the rewards of labour—will die away; I believe that such things will cease to be necessary, or to be used, when man becomes one family, and freely exchanges the fruits of his labour...

A human catastrophe is taking place in Somalia, the result of drought, famine — and the savage war conducted by the Obama administration, complete with a CIA training facility and prison....

The catastrophe is often attributed to natural conditions, but neighboring areas are not experiencing the same threat.

The difference is Obama’s war. In the guise of fighting terrorism the U.S. government, beginning under George W. Bush and continuing with a vengeance under the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Obama, has turned Somalia into a hellhole. If Americans knew what was happening in their name, they would hang their heads in shame. Or would they?

Read the full op-ed: "Peace Prize-Winner Obama Savages Somalia" here.

I understand Rush Limbaugh has nominated George W. Bush for the next vacancy on Mount Rushmore because “the United States” has not been attacked since 9/11.  Okay, if you ignore the fact that more Americans have been killed in aggressive foreign wars since 9/11 than were killed on the day the World Trade Center and Pentagon were hit and that Osama bin Laden got what he was after: American imperial overreach and a financial hemorrhage that won’t be stanched.