I could only bear to watch a few minutes of the awful posturing that took place today at the White House.

I can’t take credit for this (someone at my office made the observation), but I think this sums it the meaningless blather well: The summit at the White House today was model congress for Congress.

Are you well versed in monetary policy, the events of the housing crisis and are you looking forward to end of the Fed’s era?

Well here’s a juicy job opportunity that might interest you if you fit the qualifications of being online media guru & an amazing community organizer:

Online Marketing Manager for Independent Film

Lineplot is an animation production company in Harvard Square, Cambridge MA. We are hard at work creating a feature-length thriller-romance film, Silver Circle, to be released in early 2011. In addition to telling a great story, the film will bring free-market and sound-money principles to a wide audience.

We have ambitious online marketing plans, with the goal to make this a grassroots-driven hit movie. We want to hire a highly skilled and results-driven communicator - an online guru who can reach beyond simply marketing our movie, to building an engaged community, an actual movement around the film.

We want to make this film into a phenomenon and community is key.

The Manager’s job includes:

Website Project Manager/Designer: The manager will launch the movie’s political website/blog over a 2-3 month period. Then, continue to manage and grow the community online until the launch of Silver Circle in early 2011. Includes: managing the overall timeline, key milestones and dependencies, setting up website metrics, overseeing status reporting, managing a design team (if necessary), creating website infrastructure, brand and feel.
Preferred skills: web design, HTML/CSS, Dreamweaver, and Wordpress.

Online Communications & Marketing: The manager will write/edit/produce content regularly for the site, establish a network of online affiliates, and moderate members of the community. Build relations with key bloggers and influentials to reach a large and well-targeted audience. Find and engage with strategic, relevant, even controversial online conversations and communities to find new ideas and new readers. Leverage search engine marketing to draw more readers and sign-ups for the websites, videos and other media. Create monthly email newsletters. Develop online campaigns, contests, polls, money bombs and fundraising. Report on ROI from campaigns and help develop new strategies.
Preferred background: Proven track record in building traffic to websites and in building engagement with communities.

Live Events: Organize and assist with real-life marketing activities: screenings, trade shows, volunteer events, college campus events, summer intern events in Washington DC, film festivals, comic/animation shows, and fundraisers.
Essential: Incredible interpersonal skills.

Volunteer Coordination: Give volunteers creative opportunities to help spread awareness, interest and create energy for Silver Circle. Recruit and engage online volunteers to spread the word in creative ways. Facilitate and energize the group into a movement, all while managing results and metrics.

The manager will work closely with our small team to define the strategies and tactics to engage our politically astute audience. Ideally the candidate will understand and have a strong interest in the liberty movement, libertarian ideas, monetary policy, and/or independent film.

Ideal skills/attributes include: superior writing skills, excellent verbal presence, the flexibility to manage in a fast-paced film startup, strong understanding of marketing analytics and metrics, and project management skills. Aptitude in web, graphics design and Mac productivity software is key. BA/BS and 2 -3 years of experience in web communications and strategy development preferred.

Salary: Depends on experience.

Submit: Cover letter, resume and portfolio of web projects (websites, blogs, content developed)
To: Pasha Roberts (producer/director) on facebook or email.

I think that Peter Schiff gets it right:

While ramming their new legislation through Congress, the Democrats have taken great pains to point out that they do not intend to “socialize medicine.” But make no mistake, that’s where we’re headed. Even if some naïve centrists believe that their efforts have denied the Left a total victory, the practical implications of the current legislation sow the seeds for complete capitulation.

This first round of reform could be labeled as the ‘neutron bomb’ of the insurance industry: it leaves some of the private apparatus standing, but it irradiates whatever remains of the industry’s market viability.

The bill’s centerpiece is a clause prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on a pre-existing medical condition. However noble and marketable an idea, this proscription removes the very basis upon which any insurance model operates profitably.

A system of insurance requires that premiums be collected from a pool of low-risk people so that funds are available in case a high-risk event befalls a particular person. In that way, premiums can be low and coverage can be widely available, even if the benefits offered are hypothetically unlimited.

For example, homeowners buy fire insurance even though their houses are very unlikely to burn down. Recognizing that a fire could wipe them out financially, most homeowners endure the cost of coverage even if they never expect to collect. The same model applies to health insurance in a free market.

However, the health care bill removes the need for healthy individuals to carry insurance. Knowing that they could always find coverage if it were eventually needed, people would simply forgo paying expensive premiums while they are healthy, and then sign on when they need it. But insurance companies cannot survive if all of their policyholders are filing claims!

Correctly anticipating this incentive, the Senate bill imposes an annual fine which gradually escalates to $750 for those who fail to buy coverage. So what? I would gladly pay $750 in order to avoid the $8,000 per year I pay now for personal health insurance. Currently, I’m relatively healthy for a 46 year old and I don’t anticipate making a big claim. But if I do, under the new rules I can always get ‘insurance’ after the fact. Heck, if I can stay healthy for the next couple of decades, I’ll save a fortune. Think about how much easier the decision would be if I were 20 years younger! Since most people are capable of figuring this out, the entire insurance industry would collapse under such a system.

There can be no question that $750 annual maximum penalty is a mere placeholder. It is the camel’s nose under the tent. When the non-discrimination provision kicks in, the only way these companies could remain solvent would be for Congress to raise the fine to the point where the penalty is greater than the gain of skipping coverage.

For me, that would have to be roughly $8,000 per year. Introducing such a fine right now would have surely killed the bill. So, the wily wonks in Washington have chosen to move slower, knowing that once the first step is taken, the second becomes inevitable.

However, there is another, more devious possibility. Perhaps our elected officials actually intend to bite the hands that feed them. They could double-cross insurance companies by not raising the fine in five years, thereby forcing the industry into bankruptcy as millions of healthy people opt-out. During the ensuing ‘insurance crisis,’ our courageous leaders could ride to the rescue with a nationalized, single-payer system.

The real tragedy is that the current bill does nothing to restrain the forces that are propelling healthcare costs into the stratosphere, namely: regulatory bans of insurance competition, the out-of-control medical malpractice industry, federal programs and subsidies, and a tax code that favors a third-party payment system - which alienates the patient from the cost of his care.

To consider that many in Washington have the nerve to market this multi-trillion dollar monstrosity as a “deficit reduction bill” is to realize that our representatives have lost all touch with reality. For those keeping score, the government made similarly rosy projections in the mid-1960’s when Medicare was first introduced. The inflation-adjusted cost of that program already exceeds the original estimate by a factor of ten. That’s probably where we are headed this time around.

Drunk driving laws don’t often come up as a campaign issue, but when they do my reaction isn’t always what the person who brings them up in a campaign usually intends. DUI law in our country is chock full of gross violations of Constitutional rights, so I find myself impulsively sympathetic to the candidate accused of being ”weak on drunk driving.”

This is because being “weak on drunk driving” inevitably refers to an apparent unwillingness to further demolish the rights of citizens who might be accused of drunk driving.

This is playing out in Virginia where Republican Attorney General candidate Ken Cuccinelli is being attacked by his Democratic opponent for “consistently voted against tougher penalties for drunk drivers.” I’m sure I disagree with Cuccinelli on some issues, but if he has consistently opposed new DUI laws then he’s to be applauded.

I could write an entire essay about how DUI laws violate the Constitution, but that essay has already been written by DUI lawyer Lawrence Taylor. In “The DUI Exception to the Constitution” Taylor explains how nearly every Constitutional protection designed to protect the rights of the accused, most notably the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, has been utterly destroyed by the way our criminal justice system pursues the legitimate goal of prosecuting dangerous drunk driving.

In other words, if for no other reason than having “consistently voted against tougher penalties for drunk drivers” consider me pro-Cuccinelli.

In the most recent issue of Young American Revolution, W. James Antle III writes about the politics of Murray Rothbard.

Rothbard, an anarcho-capitalist, built the philosophical core of the modern libertarian movement. But instead of focusing on his philosophy, the article focuses on Rothbard’s long-standing search for a practical political movement that would build the foundation of his libertarian society:

Rothbard was not always pleased by the results of his excursions into electoral politics. Yet he never stopped trying to build political coalitions to fight against government encroachments and never lost hope that liberty could be more than an abstract ideal. His radical libertarianism—anarchism, really—did not blind him to the value of conventional politicking. The arena could not be ceded to believers in state power.

Read the whole article here.

And afterwards you can check out my article on the state’s war on tobacco from the same issue.

National media outlets are starting to take note of the fact that Rand Paul has a legitimate chance of becoming the next Senator from Kentucky. This from the Journal’s subscription only Political Diary:

Libertarianism Is the Family Business

Who says you can’t learn something from your parents? Ask Rand Paul, son of last year’s presidential wunderkind, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas.

The younger Mr. Paul, an eye surgeon, is making a spirited run for Kentucky’s open Senate seat, which is being vacated by Republican Jim Bunning. Earlier this week the campaign reported it had sucked up a whopping $1 million in the third quarter alone, much of that accomplished by Mr. Rand tapping into his father’s extensive, online grassroots national network. Mr. Paul’s total swamped the haul of Republican Secretary of State Trey Grayson, the favored candidate of the party leadership. Mr. Grayson announced about $643,000, and that’s after getting fundraising aid from Senate Minority Leader (and Kentucky Senator) Mitch McConnell.

The numbers have suddenly thrown a new light on the race. Mr. Grayson was figured a shoo-in for the nomination in next May’s primary. But Mr. Paul’s fundraising mojo, along with a recent Rasumussen poll showing him nearly as popular as Mr. Grayson in hypothetical matchups against Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo, may have some handicappers rethinking.

Rand Paul (yes, he’s named after the famous novelist) might also be a sign of the times. Like his father, he has a libertarian bent, and has focused the race on runaway federal spending, deficits, bailouts and earmarks — issues that Kentucky voters are eating up right now, as they worry about Washington and its spending binges. Mr. Grayson still has plenty going for him, including name recognition and a national party network to leverage to his advantage. But the younger Paul is a newcomer worth watching.

– Kim Strassel

One correction to the WSJ report: As Rand (shortened from Randal) explains in this video, he wasn’t named after Ayn Rand, even though he is a fan.

• Smoking ban study full of lies. Shocking!
• Dropping the facade: Bill would explicitly use Federal Reserve to fund government spending.
• Say no to a texting ban. It would give police another pre-text to pull anyone over, anytime.
• Democrat party warmongers, a history.
• De-criminalize it! Attempting to end the  drug war insanity in Massachusetts.
• Sibel Edmonds speaks out.
• Just because union bosses say they oppose the Baucus plan, doesn’t mean it isn’t awful.
• I’m quoted in Forbes.