From The Fields

Abraham Lincoln famously said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Recent elections in Europe prove this point. It's becoming clear that a whole lot of voters are no longer being fooled by climate change hysteria.

Elections were held throughout the Eurozone for seats in the European Parliament recently. Parties on the right and center-right gained seats at the expense of liberal and green parties which were decimated. Center Left and Center Right parties representation was largely unchanged. For the last five years, the European Parliament in Brussels has made the Green Deal its primary issue. Voters from all over Europe said no more. The hard-core climate warming alarmists are no longer scaring all the people. They are scaring a dwindling portion of some of the people.

Farmers throughout Europe have been vocally and visibly protesting Brussels' new and proposed carbon dioxide reducing regulations for months. Yes, you are correct that the visibility of the farmer's protests has not made it onto the nightly news in the United States. But it's been all over X which is now reputedly the world's largest propagator of news. Precisely because it is mostly uncensored. And if you are in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and many other European countries it has been impossible to not notice the massive tractor blockades on European streets and the spreading of manure on the doorsteps of green deal enforcers.

Green party losses in France and Germany dropped the rank of the Green bloc in the European Parliament from fourth to sixth.The Green allied Renew Europe party was decimated. The party, led by Emmanuel Macron in France lost badly to parties on the right. It no longer exists in Spain and also lost seats in Estonia, Romania and Denmark.

What's the takeaway for American elections this fall? If anyone is listening, it's clear that a full-throated refutation and promise to reverse the green new scam, will be an effective campaign message. The Democrats are clearly in the camp of trying to fool some of the people some of the time. Trump is trying out the phrase "green new scam". But he also promised to drain the swamp and ended up nearly drowning in it. RFK won't do anything with the issue given his background as an environmental lawyer. Could be a breakthrough issue for Chase Oliver? I'm Richard Fields with this week' s Report From the Fields. See you again next week.

A couple of weeks ago in this commentary, I mentioned that one of Libertarian Party Presidential 2024 nominee Chase Oliver's challenges would be gaining cooperation from the Mises Caucus dominated Libertarian National Committee. It looks like that is happening.

Oliver espouses the traditional classical liberal philosophy of libertarianism. He is reasonably pro-immigration, free trade, supports a woman's right to choose on abortion, and as a out gay man opposes the cultural wars attacks on people who identify as anything other than heterosexual. The Mises Caucus is not any of those things. Many of them are closet Trump supporters on the lesser of two evils theory. This was just glaringly illustrated by LNC Chair Angela McArdle's comments during a livestream on June 3. She said, "I endorse Chase Oliver as the best way to beat Joe Biden. Get in, loser. We are stopping Biden. That's what I think. That's what I think this campaign is about." She went on to effectively endorse Trump, saying, "Donald Trump said he's going to put a Libertarian in a cabinet position. He came out and spoke to us; he said he's a Libertarian. He has basically endorsed us." She added, "I am going to work very aggressively, especially in Blue states to make sure (Oliver) has the support he needs from the national party. I encourage people to use the Chase Oliver campaign to try and pull protest votes from the left.

She actually put on a clown nose and said, "I know, I know. It's a total clown show thing. Well I'm 100% here for that clown show."

I'm not. When McArdle invited Trump and RFK Jr. to speak to the Libertarian National Convention, I said the LP is beclowning itself. I did not know how literal that statement actually would turn out to be.Trump and Biden (or the functionaries who manage to keep him erect most of the time) are both evil. Equally evil. There is no purpose in the LP effectively trying to change the outcome of the election to the lesser of two evils when lesser doesn't exist. Trump is evil on trade, immigration, drugs, overspending and a whole lot more. Biden is equally evil on those issues and a whole lot more. The correct function of a political party is to win elections. To that end, Oliver's goal of getting 3 or 4% of the vote is too modest. The goal at the very least should be for Olvier and Kennedy between the two of them to get enough votes to force the election into the House of Representatives. Then we could get out the popcorn. I'm Richard Fields and that is this week's Report From the Fields. See you again next week..

Paraphrasing Mark Twain, history does not repeat. But it does rhyme. The rhyming we are seeing points to a repeat of World War I & II. Only this time it will probably be nuclear.

Except in hindsight, neither WWI nor WWII had a particular starting point. The hindsight starting point for WWI was the assasination of Archduke Ferdinand of Serbia which had to do with an attempt to unite Bosnia and Herzegovina with Serbia. There were two opposing alliances at the time, the Triple Entente consisting of France, Britain and Russia which was also allied with Serbia. The other main alliance was the Central Powers consisting of Italy, Germany and Austria-Hungary.

The assasination of the Archduke took place on June 28, 1914. In response, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. That caused Russia to mobilize because of their alliance with Serbia. But, remember, Germany was allied with Austria-Hungary so they declared war on Russia and France. Britain, which was allied with France and Russia then declared war on Germany. This all happened within about
6 weeks. Later, due to the perfidy of Woodrow Wilson, the United States, who had no dogs in this European fight, entered the war on the side of Britain and France.

In WWII the alliances were Germany, Italy and Japan versus, ultimately, pretty much the rest of the world. Germany, resentful of the peace treaty imposed upon them at Versailles, elected Hitler who promptly invaded Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. He tried to defeat Britain from the air in the Battle of Britain. Meanwhile, Japan had been busy with military expansion in Asia since the early 1930s. They invaded Manchuria, French Indo-China, China, Korea and India. And remember, they were allied with Germany and Italy. By 1937 the United States had terminated its commercial treaty with Japan and tightened its export control act, One result of the U.S. trade war initiatives was cutting off a large source of Japan's access to petroleum. In response Japan bombed Pearl Harbor bringing the U.S.. into a second World War where again, we had no dogs in the fight.

Today the alliances are the North American Treaty Organization, NATO, consisting of most of Western Europe and the United States. On the other side is an alliance of Russia and China with a lot of cooperation from Iran, India and possibly the OPEC countries. Most of the rest of the world are looking to see which direction the wind blows. The Obama administration's CIA covertly backed a coup in Ukraine which deposed the duly elected President of Ukraine who was more aligned with Russia than the West. Later, discussions with the new Ukraine government included admitting Ukraine into NATO.In response Russia massed its troops on the borders of Ukraine. The Biden administration along with Britain, actively torpedoed ongoing peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia leading to the current proxy war which Ukraine is losing. Now people who run the Biden administration have okayed allowing Ukraine to use U.S. manufactured missiles to attack the interior of Russia. Meanwhile, Biden's handlers have doubled down on Trump's trade restrictions on China. Remember, China is Russia's new best friend. The rhymes with history are there. Step by step we are escalating a conflict. And once again, we have no dogs in this fight. Unfortunately, we are getting past the rhyming part. WWIII will not be fought with M-15s, tanks, jet fighters and bazookas. It could very well be fought with nuclear weapons. Libertarians know that other than a few weapons manufacturers and battlefield medical suppliers, we all lose from war. In WWII we could all lose permanently. This is Richard Fields with this week's Report From the Fields. See you again next week, I hope.

Last weekend I watched the speeches of Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Donald J Trump at the Libertarian Party National Convention so you would not have to.

Kennedy correctly pointed out the many assaults on the constitution made by both Trump and Biden. He received a mixed but somewhat positive reception from the delegates. Trump was roundly booed. Particularly when he asked for Libertarians to nominate him or vote for him. His supporters chant of "We want Trump!" was drowned out by a chant of "End the Fed!!" Unaccustomed to giving his anti-Biden stump speech to a hostile crowd, he made his shortest speech ever. Thankfully.

I also watched the interminable seven ballots it took to nominate Chase Oliver as the Libertarian Presidential candidate. The right wing Mises caucus favorite, Michael Rectenwald led in early balloting with Oliver second and Mike Ter Matt third. Rectenwald's chances were probably not helped when he admitted to eating "edibles" and walked out of a press conference because he thought the questions were "boring". According to Semafor"s Dave Weigel, Rectenwald was "unusually off in his public remarks last night." Oliver offered Ter Matt his endorsement for VP in return for Ter Matt's support for Oliver for President. So on the seventh ballot Oliver eked out 49.53% of the delegates' votes to Rectenwald's 44.73%. A few singleton miscellaneous write-ins and none-of-the-above ballots prevented the required 50% majority. That forced the seventh ballot between Oliver and NOTA which Oliver won but with only 60.6% of the vote. Interestingly, if NOTA would have won, the LP would have fielded no 2024 candidate. Probably what the Trump-liking Mises Caucus wanted. Later, Oliver's choice for VP, Mike Ter Matt was nominated after two ballots.

So the always fractious LP survives to live another day. Oliver could be described as a left-libertarian. His libertarian origin story includes confronting riot police at an anti-war protest. He is the candidate who won 2% of the Senate vote in Georgia forcing the race to a run-off which was won by the Democrat. He is perhaps the hardest working LP candidate ever. He's the only LP candidate in history who campaigned in all 50 states to secure the nomination. And he's gay. One of his many challenges will be getting cooperation from the still-Mises Caucus controlled Libertarian National Committee. And, of course, the perennial LP challenge of getting media attention, particularly when there is another better known third party candidate in the race.

The presumptive nominees of both the Republican and Democratic Parties are both evil. For multiple reasons which I don't have time to go into here. Not to mention senile. Oliver is good. And, at age 38, young and decidedly not senile. He's also underselling his predictions of success, saying that getting 2% of the vote is a reasonable goal. My guess is that he will do much better than that. This is Richard Fields with this week's Report From the Fields. See you again next week.

Libertarians have long made the argument that government regulation of business is worse than useless. It is quite often counterproductive. This is because of the prevalence of something called regulatory capture.

Most people pay little attention to who gets appointed to the myriad Federal three letter agencies that do most of the regulation of business at the federal level. One group of people pays a lot of attention to that phenomenon. That would be the people who own and manage the businesses being regulated. They are very interested in making sure that the people running regulatory agencies are one of their own. It's called regulatory capture. It's why K Street is lined with the offices of very expensive business lobbyists..It's why the Washington D.C. metro area leads the United States in per capita income. Those lobbyists are largely successful at making sure that Federal regulatory agencies are almost always staffed at all levels of management by people who are very friendly to the industries they regulate. Usually said regulators actually are former employees of the industries they regulate and go back to work for those self-same industries once their stint in Washington is over.

Oh, and while these corporate cronies are in Washington working for a fraction of what they did and will in the future make working back in the industries they regulate, they do a little moonlighting. It's called insider trading. They know before the investing public does what new regulations are coming down the pike and how they will affect the values of the companies they regulate. And they profitably trade the stocks of those companies accordingly.

Here is an excellent example. Robert Kaplan was a twenty year veteran of Wall Street vampire squid Goldman Sachs. He was appointed President of the Federal Reserve's Dallas branch, presumably at less pay than he was making at Goldman. No worries though. He picked up a little extra pocket money by making rather large trades in stocks like Delta Air Lines, Chevron and Apple the exact week in 2020 that then President Trump was shutting down the economy. But we know he was not engaging in insider trading or anything nefarious like that. The Fed's own Inspector General said so. They said it was only the appearance of a conflict of interest. Kaplan did resign though.

Well guess what? He's back. At Goldman Sachs, no less. As a Vice Chairman where he will give strategic advice to the Wall Street giant's clients globally, working closely with its teams across global banking and markets, and asset and wealth management, the bank said in a statement.

Well good for him. And good for the Federal Reserve keeping us all safe from the failure of banks "too big to fail" .

And who are a lot of those K Street lobbyists that make this turnstile turn? Why, of course, Congressmen looking for a pay raise doing a cushy retirement gig by trading on their contacts on the hill. That's how regulation actually works. I'm Richard Fields with this weeks Report From the Fields. See you again next week.