Dear Customer,
A+ Member Number: 12345678

An Open Letter to All Airline Customers
Our country is facing a possible sharp economic downturn because of skyrocketing
oil and fuel prices, but by pulling together, we can all do something
to help now.

For airlines, ultra-expensive fuel means thousands of lost jobs and
severe reductions in air service to both large and small communities.
To the broader economy, oil prices mean slower activity and widespread
economic pain. This pain can be alleviated, and that is why we are
taking the extraordinary step of writing this joint letter to our
customers.

Since high oil prices are partly a response to normal market forces,
the nation needs to focus on increased energy supplies and
conservation. However, there is another side to this story because
normal market forces are being dangerously amplified by poorly
regulated market speculation.

As if market regulations are an inalienable truth…

Twenty years ago, 21 percent of oil contracts were purchased by
speculators who trade oil on paper with no intention of ever taking
delivery. Today, oil speculators purchase 66 percent of all oil
futures contracts, and that reflects just the transactions that are
known.

Speculators buy up large amounts of oil and then sell it to each other
again and again. A barrel of oil may trade 20-plus times before it is
delivered and used; the price goes up with each trade and consumers
pick up the final tab. Some market experts estimate that current
prices reflect as much as $30 to $60 per barrel in unnecessary
speculative costs.

Over seventy years ago, Congress established regulations to control
excessive, largely unchecked market speculation and manipulation.
However, over the past two decades, these regulatory limits have been
weakened or removed. We believe that restoring and enforcing these
limits, along with several other modest measures, will provide more
disclosure, transparency and sound market oversight. Together, these
reforms will help cool the over-heated oil market and permit the
economy to prosper.

Right… just a bit more regulation should do it.

The nation needs to pull together to reform the oil markets and solve
this growing problem.

We need your help. Get more information and contact Congress by
visiting www.StopOilSpeculationNow.com/sos.

Sincerely,

Robert Fornaro
Chairman, President and CEO
AirTran Airways, Inc.

Bill Ayer
Chairman, President and CEO
Alaska Airlines, Inc.

Gerard J. Arpey
Chairman, President and CEO
American Airlines, Inc.

Lawrence W. Kellner
Chairman and CEO
Continental Airlines, Inc.

Richard Anderson
CEO
Delta Air Lines, Inc.

Mark B. Dunkerley
President and CEO
Hawaiian Airlines, Inc.

Dave Barger
CEO
JetBlue Airways Corporation

Timothy E. Hoeksema
Chairman, President and CEO
Midwest Airlines

Douglas M. Steenland
President and CEO
Northwest Airlines, Inc.

Gary Kelly
Chairman and CEO
Southwest Airlines Co.

Glenn F. Tilton
Chairman, President and CEO
United Airlines, Inc.

Douglas Parker
Chairman and CEO
US Airways Group, Inc.

What a damn shame to see all these successful businesses shooting their own feet by helping to cripple the very system that enabled their success. Their scapegoat fails the litmus test for legal reprimand because they (speculators) aren’t forcefully violating anyone’s right to life, liberty or property. To the contrary, any regulation of trading forcefully violates investors right to liberty and property. Outside of force or fraud, how they choose to spend their money is a rightful prerogative. These calls for legal action are calls for an inversion of the proper role of government. Government should protect investors, not force them to comply with arbitrary whims. Such is the manner of crumbling nations.

I guess it’s because I retain just a sliver of hope (or naivety one) that my worst fears are just paranoia. Here are the juicy quotes, one of which could have been lifted verbatim from Atlas.

We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.

Wow. And exactly why would they be more qualified or competent than the legitimate leaders of these companies? Do they have some secret bureaucrat tactic for crude oil refinery that would increase supply? No. Of course not. But, they do have the illigitimate power to redistribute wealth. What they could do is offset a decrease in the price at the pump with revenue from their their favorite weapon - taxes.

They’ll raise taxes, which basically redistributes the cost of gas amongst their tax victims. Considering the typical levels of incompetency, negligence and economic inefficiency that are hallmarks of government run entities, we’ll then be paying more per capita for a gallon of gas than we were back in the days of privatization. Imagine a man with a widget factory who can make 100 widgets/year at a cost of $100. He then sells the widgets for $2 dollar each. Let’s say the man is overtaken by another man who then funds the widget production by stealing pennies from people. He can boldly proclaim that he sells widgets for 50¢. What he wouldn’t disclose is that he’s not the best businessman, therefore it took 200 stolen pennies to make each widget - twice the cost of the original owner. Sure, people are paying half as much for widgets, but their right to property was violated, plus the total cost for everyone is higher. That extra cost represents the economic waste and destruction of government meddling.

Even though the pump might say $2/gallon, the additional cost would come from taxation, which is much easier for them to sweep under the rug. For those oblivious to reality, Government will appear to have saved the day, but really they will have not only raised the cost of gas due to their inherent overhead, but trampled the rights of millions of individuals in the process. This is symptomatic of a crumbling nation, and is exactly what they would do with a nationalized system.

What we do has to be in the interest of the American people. Not major corporations.

What can I say? These collectivist thugs see an individual (the business owner) not as a sovereign being, but as a blank entity subject to whatever trampling that’s needed as a means to their ends. Keep in mind these are not flagrant Hollywood leftists, agenda driven pundits or silly activists talking, but powerful government officials whispering notions of socializing a major industry.

Yet another mindless antitrust crusade. I’ll be sure not to consider any AMD products for purchase from now on.

You should read the article, but this about sums it up:

In particular, the FTC wants more information on Intel’s practice of offering favorable pricing on chips to certain customers.

Sounds like smart business to me.

George Reisman obliterates the elected gang we call congress and their pandering petroleum witch hunt. These thugs are so consistently ignorant and evil, George simply re-posted his views from two years ago.

Our government’s policy of preventing the increase in the supply of oil, atomic power, coal, and natural gas, is what is responsible for the high prices of oil and gasoline that we must now pay. Let it just get out of the way, and the supply of all these forms of energy will dramatically increase and the price of oil and gasoline will fall, even more dramatically.
Every senator who votes to place obstacles in the way of U.S. energy production, who helps to harass U.S. energy producers, is voting to hamper OPEC’s most important competitors and to allow OPEC to go on obtaining high prices. Such senators are the ones who bear responsibility for the high price of oil and gasoline. They are senators serving OPEC not the American people. They are the ones who deserve to be interrogated, in order to learn how they could be so blind, so stupid, and so destructive.

A great read.

Socialist Paul Kanjorski [D-PA] further spearheads our descent into destruction with a gem of barbaric brilliance he’s named the “Consumer Reasonable Energy Price Protection Act of 2008″. H.R. 5800 would establish a “Reasonable Profits Board” that would serve to determine if oil companies are bringing in too much money.

Since we’ve, for all intents and purposes, abandoned the founding principles for this nation, and are no longer chained by constitutional justification, this measure is fair game.

Here’s uncle Sam’s claim - “You don’t have a right to your profits, we do. Therefore, it doesn’t matter how you might reinvest your profits, we’d rather confiscate them by force as a form of pandering and income redistribution.”

It escapes me how any human could claim the right to dictate the appropriate profitability of another. Unless he’s the consumer, by what right can he tell another how much the product of his labor and resources should be worth in barter? A producer and his voluntary consumers are the only entities with any justifiable means to determine price. Any man that claims such determination can rightfully be made by anyone other than the producer and consumer, and then imposed by force, is an advocate of slavery.

The proper response to this meddling is for the victim (big oil) to simply say “no, we quit”. It would only take once, as the crumbling economy would send a message to congress reminding them who’s rightfully in charge - the men of production, not crooks and cowards who scheme their way into office and pander to stay there. Kanjorski and all the other rodents would scurry in a desperate attempt to officially retract the 13th amendment in order to fix their boo boo. I long for the then day where men proudly assert their right to the product of their labor. When the victims realize their sanction is the only power Washington thugs maintain, the sick little game that is American politics will be nothing more than a footnote in history.

So, keep pushing Paul. The more you push, the sooner those of us who understand life, liberty and property can rebuild the nation you’re doing your best to obliterate.

“Stimulus Package” - what a colossal parade of ignorance. This episode of pandering is about nothing more than a bureaucratic desire to appear to be ‘doing something’ about the economic situation resulting from previous desires to appear to be ‘doing something’ - in both cases, economic ignorance is to blame. Walter Williams nails the do-gooders as he always does.

There are three ways government can get the money for a stimulus package. It can tax, borrow or inflate the currency by printing money. If government taxes to hand out money, one person is stimulated at the expense of another who pays the tax, who is unstimulated and has less money to spend. If government borrows the money, it’s the same story. This time the unstimulated person is the lender who has less money to spend. If government prints money, creditors, and then everyone else, are unstimulated. As my colleague Russell Roberts said in a NPR broadcast, “It’s like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end. Funny thing — the water in the shallow end doesn’t get any deeper.”

This “package” is nothing more than income redistribution, just like all other economic meddling perpetrated by our government. When government touches the free-market, regardless of how, value is taken from one person and either given to another, or simply destroyed - by force.

The NRA is clearly not who I thought they were. To the extent that they persist in their crusade for Florida’s HB503 bill - a bill that enables possession of firearms on another’s property, and regardless of the owners discretion - the association has revealed themselves as unprincipled and obtuse warriors for a cause at any price.

Per their public statements and my private conversations with NRA-ILA staff, their claim that an individuals right to life trumps property rights. Their error is failure to distinguish the right to life, and the right to defend one’s life by use of deadly force courtesy of the second amendment. The former inalienably stands alone, while the latter assumes a corollary right - the right to property.

In the Florida bill, they are opposing the sanctity of property rights as they pertain to a situation where all involved parties are voluntarily present, and most likely bound (also voluntarily) under contractual terms. If an individual’s right to property is subject to the whim of political consensus, then what’s the NRA’s wildcard for excluding a specific type of property (firearms) from such whim? Based on their logic, a homeowner also should have no right to allow others to possess firearms on his property. How can the NRA not see how detrimental such precedent will be? Maybe not until gun owners property rights are trumped by the same premise that the NRA now blindly ignores when a new state bill crosses a Governor’s desk that deems firearm owners have no right to their property (firearms) because such right encroaches another’s right to life.

The counter claim that an employee’s automobile is shielded by his property right fails to consider the overall context. An employees car is (typically) their property, but that car is parked on the employer’s property. There has to be an authoritative hierarchy of rights, otherwise the employer would have no legal basis to tow an employees car from their parking lot. If an employer’s rules specify no weapons on premises, it doesn’t matter where or how, or what justifications, none are allowed - period. If you can’t/don’t accept those terms, attempt to negotiate or find a new job.

Laws and legal enforcement thereof should be based on rights. If an action doesn’t forcefully encroach on another’s right to life, liberty or property, or doesn’t objectively convey intent to do so, it shouldn’t be illegal. The biggest destroyer of personal freedom and economic prosperity are subjective laws - ones that ignore the above prescription. In this case, the employees right to property isn’t forcefully encroached because their presence is voluntarily acceptive of a particular set of stipulations. They are agreeing to a stipulation regarding their property right while present on the employers premises. Therefore, any law overriding this hierarchy is irrational and a detriment to our nation. Neutering a business owners right to enforce his preference to ban weapons is no different than government telling a restaurant owner, who’d otherwise allow weapons, that he can’t. The underlying principle is identical. If you support the fist case, you are supporting the second - you can’t have it both ways.

Not only are the NRA wrong in their stance on this measure, but by throwing phrases like big business and corporate bullies, they’re now bordering on class-warfare, anti-business rhetoric that would feel at home in any DNC stump speech. Heston would be so proud.

The result of any political stance void of explicit premises is nothing more than a pragmatic and likely contradictory opinion. To compromise a fundamental principal for the sake of one that relies on such is irrational. This case is perfectly illustrative of a misguided and ignorant crusade that will serve to undermine the more important cause. The NRA is doing nothing more than arming the enemy (the anti-gun crowd) with yet another avenue of battle. What a tremendous mistake.

Heidi N. Moore questions Capitalism and Objectivism:

Should there be more Ayn Rand to instruct young, impressionable minds? Or is the problem with capitalism today too much Rand already? [emphasis added]

With this stupid question, she clearly signals that she doesn’t understand either.

I wish this were courtesy of The Onion.

A silly new bill strives to criminalize perception in the vein of thought crimes. Since we’ve pretty much abandoned a proper legal system (one prescribing law based on objective rules pertinent to the protection of an individuals right to life, liberty and property), prosecuting anyone for anything is now fair game.

This blob of insane, emotional drivel would make one who commits “visual sexual aggression” (looking at another individual while being conscious of a particular set of concepts) a felon. The chief do-gooder of this absurdity is Dawn Hill, a Democrat. Dawn enlightens us with her motive:

Her involvement started when Ogunquit Police Lt. David Alexander was called to a local beach to deal with a man who appeared to be observing children entering the community bathrooms. Because the state statute prevents arrests for visual sexual aggression of a child in a public place, Alexander said he and his fellow officer could only ask the man to move along.

“There was no violation of law that we could enforce. There was nothing we could charge him with,” Alexander said.

He attended a talk with Hill a week later and brought the case to her attention. Hill pledged to do what she could, Alexander said, and the result was a change through the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee in the House, which made the law applicable in both private and public places.

Alexander said he’s grateful Hill was willing to take up the cause, and is hopeful the measure will clear the Senate.

“I’ll be pleased that we were able to identify this flaw and take steps to rectify it,” he said.

Under the bill, if someone is arrested for viewing children in a public place, it would be a Class D felony if the child is between 12 to 14 years old and a Class C felony if the child is under 12, according to Alexander.

Hill said she believes the move was necessary to correct what she called a “loophole” in the state’s criminal law statutes. [emphasis added]

We can only presume the “loophole” Dawn refers to was the remnant of objectivity present in her state’s legal code.

I imagine it was terribly frustrating to know that such an atrocity (one individual looking at another one while he could possibly be thinking about something that, if enacted, could possibly be immoral or objectionable to some people) could occur to helpless children. In principle, we should consider expanding the protective scope of this measure to all people (with the exception of white, capitalist males or course). We must take the proper steps to protect individuals from the irreparable damage inflicted when others detect their existence while maintaining a forbidden state of consciousness. If we really wanted to be a catalyst for positive change, we could also ban indiscriminate auditory detection of humans under such mindsets.

With time, we can only hope this intuitive, and clairvoyant legal tactic will be the cornerstone for a litany of progressive laws that would enable government control of every thought, emotion, action and consequence of our lives. Society will then be well on its way to the utter domination of existence, identity and causality, abandoning its current status as a mere subordinate of reality.

In the interest of full disclosure, just yesterday, while in line at Dunkin Donuts, I actually pondered the taste of a sour cream doughnut without imagining paying for it. I admit it. It was wrong, and for the greater good, I’m willing to pay the consequences.