Podcast 420

Bob Davis Unplugged. I’ve always admired talk show hosts who can do a good show without notes, preparation or a plan. Certainly walk and talk podcasts fit that bill, but it helps to walk while you talk. In studio is a different story. There have been some interesting developments in the news this week. Commentators are back to following the proverbial bouncing ball and missing some points that I think need to be made. Regarding the Oregon shooting; When I asked people what was going on in the news they said, “There’s the Trump thing, the Pope thing and oh yeah, another mass shooting.” Of course the President didn’t skip a second rushing out to demand Americans surrender their guns. Why do we have a second amendment? Is there a final check on the dangerous power of government? While we don’t generally think of a government that seems to exist to extract money from our paychecks and mail checks to others, including billionaires like Warren Buffett, there’s immense power in spying and militarized police departments. Then there’s the Communist Pope. The left loves Francis, or at least they did until it was reported that the Pope – who would rather talk about the scourge of Capitalism rather than the scourge of pedophilia in the Catholic Church – met with Kim Davis, the Kentucky County Clerk who refused to marry gay couples. Suddenly the ‘amazing’ Pope Francis was tarred and feathered on social media, to the extent that the Vatican this week back pedaled ‘explaining’ the Pope’s meeting with Davis. Then there are the economic pundits and employment numbers. Almost all of them predicted a ‘great’ employment report this week, especially since low gas prices ‘act like a tax cut by stimulating the economy’, until they don’t. Now, if you have been listening to the Bob Davis Podcasts you have been warned about this shibboleth long ago. Lower gas prices don’t ‘act like a tax cut’. Our economy would have to create over 375,000 jobs a month for a long time in order to bring the millions of people who are out of the work force back in. Sadly 375,000 is a number this country’s economy has not been able to attain since the recession back in 2008, despite all the efforts to ‘stimulate’ and ‘prime the pump’ from a trillion dollar stimulus to ‘cars for clunkers’ and every other cockamamie scheme cooked up by President Obama. Moreover, none of the presidential candidates, on both sides of the political spectrum seem to have a clue about how to grow the US Economy other than more stimulus, or tax cuts but no spending cuts. Have we — as in everyone in the world — forgotten how to be capitalists? Could we feed ourselves without a job or government handout if we had to? Maybe this could be one of the positive effects of a future ‘gig economy’ … with everyone freelancing, we might actually learn to create, not take. Sponsored by Pride of Homes and X Government Trucks.

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Podcast 418

Live From The Kitchen. The last few days in podcasting have been busy. Back in the bunker, and pleasantly exhausted from the weekend at Agorafest 2015, time for a podcast live from the kitchen. After a great dinner, sipping back coffee going over the day’s and the week’s news in the wake of a weekend discussing political and social concepts. It seems the news is more and more a rehash rather than focused on what really matters. It was said this weekend that the GOP has probably created more anarchists than anything else. That might be amended to suggest both mainline political parties are creating frustrated and angry people, and apparently not listening to them. It isn’t that congress can’t get anything done, it’s what congress, and the president actually does that’s creating the frustration, anger, discord and angst. We’re back to calling anyone who can’t be categorized a ‘populist’, including Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump the UK’s labor leader Jeremy Corbin and oddly enough, Pope Francis. The populist movement in the United States was primarily a movement that served the interests of midwestern farmers against the Republican and Democrat parties, and bears little resemblance to rhetoricians, marxists, and socialists. Yet the media continues to throw out the term, as though people actually understand what it means. As the Republican Speaker of the House resigns amid the ‘planned parenthood shut down fight’, people naively wonder whether the next speaker will be more ‘conservative’. Emphatically yes, they are all conservative in the sense that they serve the interests of big government against all the people. That makes them conservative statists (in my view conservative socialists) regardless of whether they have a D or an R after their name. This is the problem in American politics, not whether the Federal Government funds Planned Parenthood. Shut it down! Yes! Shut it down. Pull the fuel lines and plugs and batteries and let it rot in the wheat field! Don’t waste your breath on distractions, shut the government down because it is out of control, and all our so called representatives are part of the problem, they are certainly not the solution. We need new ideas, new concepts and these are not the people who will find them, develop them, and support them. Two stories to watch right now. One is economic, and the other is Russia in Syria. As debt levels increase to dangerous levels, the world’s central banks don’t know what to do. The danger of a meltdown is increasing. Putin has Obama checkmated in Syria. First the administration denied the Russians were going into Syria, then they minimized it. Now they’re actually negotiating with Putin. Russia is now fighting against ISIS, allied with Assad and Iran and Iraq. Where’s the US? Testing the idea of ‘non-interventionist’ foreign policy while Putin practices Realpolitik and Realist Foreign Policy brilliantly. Clearly it is necessary to point out yet again that we have exceeded all the political, social and economic constructs of the last thirty years and something new is coming. Are we ready for it? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and X Government Trucks. 

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Podcast 416 – AgoraFest 2015

AgoraFest 15. Live from a gathering of Anarchists and a few Libertarians in Frontenac, Minnesota at the Villa Maria Conference Center and Retreat, better known as Hogwarts. One thing missing from politics these days is fresh ideas. It doesn’t matter whether you are on the right, or left, it sure seems like political parties are peddling stale and recycled ideas from a time when Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ was brand new. In this podcast AgoraFest attendees explain what Agorists are all about and in the process throw out some ideas that are unsettling to some. One of those ideas is to reject politics and political involvement completely, in the process of creating a community of anarchists with a free market entrepreneurial focus. One might think Agorafest is a gathering of eccentrics who spend time thinking and talking about things that don’t matter to people involved in traditional politics. To a certain extent that is true, but it is also true there is more going on here than talks about Austrian Economics and Home Brewing. At a time when traditional politicians claim an economic policy is either another tax cut, or another program to redistribute the fruits of an individual’s labor, maybe some of these ideas about self sufficiency, government power and volunteerism have some real value. Some people in what we might call traditional politics reject this kind of thing out of hand, and they might suggest rejecting political involvement is nihilistic, but it is also true that traditional politics has been unresponsive to the point where people feel their so called leaders are not listening to voters, and are more interested in retaining power. It’s this kind of behavior that adds credibility to the idea of withdrawing, working on building a community and setting an example. Podcast listeners and subscribers will have to decide whether this example is valid for them. At the very least though, they might listen and think about something besides what the bouncing news ball says they should think about. Sponsored by X Government Trucks and Pride of Homes. 

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