The bizarrely-named Reince Preibus, who played the shell game in 2012 against Paul supporters.

Something that Drug War opponents have been saying for years.  From The Washington Post.

Relevant sentences: “The data supports the many stories about the difficulties marijuana growers in Mexico face in light of increased competition from the north. As domestic marijuana production has ramped up in places such as California, Colorado and Washington, marijuana prices have fallen, especially at the bulk level.

“Two or three years ago, a kilogram [2.2 pounds] of marijuana was worth $60 to $90,” a Mexican marijuana grower told NPR news in December 2014. “But now they’re paying us $30 to $40 a kilo. It’s a big difference. If the U.S. continues to legalize pot, they’ll run us into the ground.””

Drug prohibition is the reason the drug cartels exist in the first place, along with the black market crime rampant in the US, as well as the proliferating bureaucracies that have been set up to combat the effects of prohibition.  End prohibition and crime will evaporate, and the DEA and other Drug War agencies will have no reason to exist.

D.A.R.E, that ridiculous organization that promotes the Drug War to kids, wants to be very clear that it still loathes pot.  Keep your kids away from the malign influence of these low-level minions for Prohibition.  Better yet, take your kids to hear a speaker from LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

From Nick Gillespie at Reason.  Relevant sentences: “Put simply, Trump is the distillation of conservative Republican politics for all of the 21st century. He’s not the cause of a GOP implosion, but the final effect of an intellectual and political hollowing-out of any semblance of commitment to limited government, individual rights, and free markets. He is what happens when you fail to live up to your rhetoric and aspirations again and again.”

Don Boudreaux, of Cafe Hayek fame, posted his thoughts yesterday on the entitlement mentality that many harbor in this country and around the world.  In his post, the object of felt entitlement was for the fruit of another’s labor, a sense of deserving that which one hasn’t themselves produced.  I know very few people who would come right out and say that they had a morally-correct claim on another’s wealth, but when rephrased into political language, almost everyone falls into the entitlement camp.  Indeed, this type of entitlement mentality is highly conducive to government growth, the Political Class builds their Leviathan State upon it.  Politicians can induce envy and resentment in the populace against various hobgoblins and harness it to create the legislative monstrosities that result in rampant taxation, regulation, and war.

But what about another entitlement mentality, one that is imminently unpopular with the Political Class because to allow this mentality to flourish would mean the obliteration of their power?  I’m talking about the sense of entitlement one has for liberty.  The liberty to keep your entire paycheck, to voluntarily enter and exit personal and business relationships at will, the sense of entitlement for unhampered voluntarism.

I don’t mean merely liberty for oneself, but liberty for everyone.  I’m greatly benefited by whatever liberty supermarkets have to operate in the market, or whatever liberty doctors have in treating my family and I.  A sense of entitlement for liberty is the one entitlement mentality the political elite will not tolerate, because it is the immovable object blocking their path to power.  That’s why liberty is portrayed as selfish, dangerous, reckless, etc., despite the fact that whatever liberty we still retain is responsible for the degree of prosperity, peace, and civilization we enjoy.  Liberty addresses social dilemmas far better and far more quickly than bureaucrats, who, rather than solving social dilemmas, merely exploit their existence to increase regulation and taxation, effectively creating more social dilemmas.  And whether it’s the Drug War, terrorism, poverty, crime, pollution, etc., government is the chief source of social pollution.

Destroying liberty seems to be the obviously wrong answer to the US-instigated chaos in the Middle East.  The right, and only effective, answer would be to immediately withdraw troops, weapons, and tax dollars and stop worrying about every hiccup in relations between Third World dictators and their detractors.  It would save billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and realistically reduce terrorism, since it’s the policy of never-ending drone-bombing of Middle Eastern villages, payoffs to their corrupt leaders, and weapons deals with head-chopping murderers creates the terrorism.  That is far too inconvenient for the Political Class, who would prefer to take this opportunity to ban cash.

A relevant sentence from the linked article: “Not even the worst dictatorships in history eliminated money outright.”

Continuing waves of chaos rippling outward from the 2003 US invasion.  From Antiwar.com.

That’s how this election cycle should be viewed, with the citizen voting accordingly.  Meaning not at all.

Production of good and services in every other part of the economy shrank.

Dan Sanchez on this insidious evil, at Mises.  Relevant sentences: “Instead of obnoxiously demanding that the public hand over its wealth, the government just quietly siphons it away. This way it avoids public outrage and resistance, and so is able to maximize the loot.  As Jean Baptiste Colbert (finance minister to King Louis XIV of France) put it, “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to get the most feathers with the least hissing.” With inflation, the geese hardly hiss, because they think they are simply molting, and are unaware they are even being plucked.”