Friends of Liberty

The Innovation Nation vs. the Warfare-Welfare State

January 26, 2012
Alexander T. Tabarrok
The Atlantic

This is our national identity crisis in a nutshell: Do we want government spending half its money on redistribution and military, or re-dedicating itself to science, infrastructure, and health research?

We like to think of ourselves as an innovation nation, but our government is a warfare/welfare state. To build an economy for the 21st century we need to increase the rate of innovation and to do that we need to put innovation at the center of our national vision.

Innovation, however, is not a priority of our massive federal government. Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. federal budget, $2.2 trillion annually, is spent on the four biggest warfare and welfare programs, Medicaid, Medicare, Defense and Social Security. In contrast, the National Institutes of Health, which funds medical research, spends $31 billion annually, and the National Science Foundation spends just $7 billion.

The federal government does spend some money on innovation, but mostly for innovation in warfare. The Department of Defense, for example, spends $78 billion on R&D. Good for the DoD, at least they are thinking about the future. But most defense R&D is for weapons research that is unlikely to generate significant spillovers to other areas of the economy. The basic and applied non-weapons research that has the best chance of creating beneficial spillovers is a small minority of defense R&D. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, for example, helped to develop the Internet but DARPA’s budget is only $3 billion. Even when we lump all federal R&D spending together regardless of quality it amounts to just $150 billion, a mere 4 percent of the budget.

Putting innovation at the center of our national vision is not simply about spending more money. An innovation nation would think about all problems differently. The long debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka: Obamacare) for example, was almost entirely about welfare and redistribution, about dividing the pie. During this debate how much did we hear about health innovation?

From an innovation perspective, two facts about health care are of importance. First, a huge amount of health care spending is wasted. A strong consensus exists on this point from health care researchers along the political spectrum. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on health care today with little or nothing to show for it in terms of improved health. Second, although spending more on health care today doesn’t get you much, spending more on health care research gets you a lot. The increases in life expectancy from fewer deaths brought on by cardiovascular disease over the 1970-1990 period, for example, were worth over $30 trillion. Yes, $30 trillion. In other words, the gains from better health over the period 1970-1990 were comparable to all the gains in material wealth over the same period.

Looking at the future, if medical research could reduce cancer mortality by just 10 percent, that would be worth $5 trillion to U.S. citizens (and even more taking into account the rest of the world). The net gain would be especially large if we could reduce cancer mortality with new drugs, which are typically cheap to make once discovered. A reduction in cancer mortality of this size does not seem beyond reach. Medical research spending is far more valuable on the margin than medical care spending yet because we lack an innovation vision, we endlessly debate how to divide the pie while we overlook potentially huge improvements in human welfare.

THE RED-TAPE MENACE

Regulation is another area in which we lack an innovation vision. There are good regulations and bad regulations and lots of debate over which is which. From an innovation perspective, however, this debate misses a key point. Let’s assume that all regulations are good. The problem is that even if each regulation is good, the net effect of all the regulations combined may be bad. A single pebble in a big stream doesn’t do much, but throw enough pebbles and the stream of innovation is dammed.

Building in the United States today, for example, requires navigating a thicket of environmental, zoning and aesthetic regulations that vary not only state by state but county by county. If building a house is difficult, try building an airport. Passenger travel has more than tripled since deregulation in 1978, but in that time only one major new airport has been built: Denver’s. That airport is now the fourth busiest in the world. Indeed the top seven busiest airports are all in the United States, not so much because we are big but because without new construction we are forced to overcrowd our existing infrastructure. The result is delays and inefficiency. Meanwhile, China is building 50 to 100 new airports over the next 10 years.

Regulatory thickets are also strangling energy innovation. The U.S. Department of Energy, for example, estimates that small and environmentally friendly hydro-electric projects could generate at least 30,000 MWs of power annually. That’s equivalent to the generating capacity of about 30 nuclear power plants. Moreover, since 97% of U.S. dams are generating zero power today, these projects would not require building any new dams. So what’s the problem? The problem is that building even a small hydro-electric project requires the approval of numerous agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, State Environmental Departments and State Historic Preservation Departments. It’s simply too expensive, time-consuming and risky to build these projects when any of these agencies could veto it at any time. The net result is that we generate more electricity than necessary by leveling mountains, burning coal, and filling our air with dangerous particulates and climate-changing CO2.

BUILDING THE NEXT HOOVER DAM

Our ancestors were bold and industrious. They built a significant portion of our energy and road infrastructure more than half a century ago. It would be almost impossible to build that system today. Could we build the Hoover Dam today? We have the technology. We seem to lack the will. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the infrastructure of our past to travel to our future. Airports, an electricity smart grid that doesn’t throw millions into the dark every few years, and ubiquitous Wi-Fi are among the important infrastructures of the 21st century, and they are caught in the regulatory thicket.

Our economy is stagnant and for the first time in a long time, and the national mood is deeply pessimistic. To restore our economy and our spirits we need to become an innovation nation. An innovative nation would improve the prospects for economic growth but could do much more. The warfare-welfare state divides the pie and also divides Americans. Americans, however, are an innovative, forward-thinking people and the prospects are good for uniting them on a pro-growth, pro-innovation agenda.

This essay is drawn from Launching the Innovation Renaissance Alex Tabarrok’s new book, published by TED books.

Alexander Tabarrok
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Alexander Tabarrok is Research Director for The Independent Institute, Assistant Editor of The Independent Review, and Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University, and he has taught at the University of Virginia and Ball State University. Dr. Tabarrok is the editor of The Independent Institute books, Entrepreneurial Economics (Oxford University Press), The Voluntary City (with David Beito and Peter Gordon, University of Michigan Press), and Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime.

F-BOMB $50 surveillance computer hides in your CO detector, cracks your WiFi

By Myriam Joire posted Jan 28th 2012 8:07AM

What happens when you take a PogoPlug, add 8GB of flash storage, some radios (WiFi, GPS) and perhaps a few sensors, then stuff everything in a 3D-printed box? You get the F-BOMB (Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors), a battery-powered surveillance computer that costs less than $50 to put together using off-the-shelf parts. The 4 x 3.5 x 1-inch device, created by security researcher Brendan O'Connor and funded by DARPA's Cyber Fast Track program, is cheap enough for single-use scenarios where costly traditional hardware is impractical. It can be dropped from an AR Drone, tossed over a fence, plugged into a wall socket or even hidden inside a CO detector. Once in place, the homebrew Linux-based system can be used to gather data and hop onto wireless networks using WiFi-cracking software. Sneaky. Paranoid yet? Click on the source link below for more info.

Wisdom's Maw: The Story Behind the Story

"If someone were to take you out - today - would anyone see the book?"

by Todd Brendan Fahey

It was an absurd question. But we live in absurd times, and so I paused in reflection and took a quick mental inventory of just how many copies of the manuscript were floating around the U.S. and England. In the final analysis - including published excerpts from the book - there are far too many copies of Wisdom's Maw circulating "out there" to do anything about. For better or worse, the CIA will have to lie with its mistakes.

There was a time, though, many years ago, late Spring of 1990, when I found myself worrying about the little things: the car that had been in my rearview mirror for several miles and many odd street changes, or the sonar blip somewhere in the bowels of my phone line to which I could set my watch, or whether this turn of the ignition key would be the last move I would ever make.

Democratic Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, in a closed door session of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1978, deemed Project MK-ULTRA, "the most diabolical experiment imaginable in a democratic society." And from what I know now, from the four-plus years it took to research and complete Wisdom's Maw, I would have to agree.

For over twenty years, several branches of the federal government of the United States of America - most notably the Army Chemical Corps, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation - sought as their ultimate objective nothing less than total control over human behavior. A little-known chemical compound procured from a Swiss pharmaceutical firm was to be The Key. Today, of course, we know the drug as LSD-25.

It was through my reading of the history of lysergic acid diethylamide in two works of nonfiction, Acid Dreams and Storming Heaven, that I decided this epoch in American history to be worthy of a novel - a work of fiction with space and time altered, as if in the powerful throes of an acid trip, and with the dimensions redrawn to benefit certain human agents who may have been neglected proportionally by state-approved historians. Such an art form was the only way to make sense of LSD.

Precisely, it was the coming across the figure of one Alfred M. Hubbard in Acid Dreams, in the chapter titled "The Original Captain Trips," that would throw me headlong into an obsession that would culminate in the completion of a 222pp. novel surrounding Project MK-ULTRA.

After the buzz settled from my readings, I immediately set for myself the goal of knowing more about the man whom Timothy Leary called, "the great, enigmatic triple-agent," than anyone alive. It was during this period of research, between March of 1990 and the summer of 1991, that the word "paranoia" became a meaningless abstraction.

I was, am, and will forever be convinced that Captain Al Hubbard was a conscious, dedicated agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, and that his astonishing career as "the Johnny Appleseed of LSD" was but a pebble on the surface of MK-ULTRA.

After dozens of hours of taped conversations with the likes of Myron Stolaroff, Drs. Humphrey Osmond and Abram Hoffer, Timothy Leary, and Laura Huxley, wife of the great psychedelic visionary Aldous Huxley, I was able to deliver to Steve Hager and John Holmstrom at High Times a long, investigative piece on Al Hubbard for its November 1991 issue. I was also so convinced of my being under surveillance, and that the phones at my home and place of employment (then a Big-Eight law firm) were tapped, that my wife and I moved abruptly one afternoon from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, Utah. ("They" would need to really want to go after me, I reasoned, to follow me to Utah.)

It was in the idyll of a huge, old flat with hardwood floors, just off Temple Square, in the heart of Salt Lake City, that Wisdom's Maw was completed. While in the throes of too many acid trips, drawing from Freedom of Information Act-sensitive documents, and supported by long breaks between quarters at Weber State University, where I had been hired to teach freshman English, I was able to finish off three-quarters of the novel in about eight weeks (the other one-quarter had taken four years...it must germinate, I kept telling myself...). The excerpting of the book in 1993 by Utah Holiday, a now-defunct glossy regional, allowed me to forget about the sound of footsteps (the phone-blips stopped after leaving L.A.), and since then, the only concern I have had is the nature of the baffling silence of virtually every major publisher in New York.

Author Ernest J. Gaines (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman), who spent time at Stanford in '59-60 with some of the principals in Wisdom's Maw, uttered this bottom-line conclusion after reading the manuscript, perhaps the raison d'etre of its unacknowledged status:

"You have written a very controversial book here, and if it is published and read, you might have to answer some questions to some pretty big boys. I hope you have the backbone for it." - Ernest J. Gaines

Indeed, appearing front and center in Wisdom's Maw - toward the novel's premise that the CIA, using LSD, created "The Sixties" for the purpose of containing, then destroying, a burgeoning youth rebellion - are no less than Hunter S. Thompson, the Hells Angels, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Al Hubbard and other known and suspected MK-ULTRA spooks, as well as one former Oregon wrestler who shall here go nameless.

For a decade, readers, you have had access to as much of Wisdom's Maw as exists in a state of publication. The New York literary mafia, as Timothy Leary liked to call it, has sat on this Pandora's box long enough. Are you ready to open the lid?

Todd Brendan Fahey

In remembrance: Congressman Larry McDonald

Lawrence Patton McDonald Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Georgia's 7th district Preceded by Succeeded by Personal details Born Died Political party Spouse(s) Profession Religion


In office January 3, 1975 – September 1, 1983 (died in office)
John W. Davis
George Darden
April 1, 1935 Atlanta, Georgia
September 1, 1983 (aged 48) near Sakhalin, Soviet Union
Democratic
Anna McDonald (née Tryggvadottir) Kathryn McDonald (née Jackson)
Physician
Independent MethodistLawrence Patton McDonald, M.D. (April 1, 1935 – September 1, 1983) was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the seventh congressional district of Georgia as a Democrat. He was a passenger on board Korean Air Lines Flight 007 shot down by Soviet interceptors and presumed dead.

A conservative Democrat, he was active in numerous civic organizations and maintained a veryconservative voting record in Congress. He was known for his staunch opposition to communismand believed in long standing covert efforts by powerful U.S. groups to bring about a socialist world government. He was the second president of the John Birch Society. and also a cousin of General George S. Patton.[1]

Contents [hide]

[edit]Early life and career

Larry McDonald was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, more specifically in the eastern part of the city that is in DeKalb County. As a child, he attended private and parochial schools before attending a non-denominational high school.[1] He spent two years at high school before graduating[1] in 1951.[2] He studied at Davidson College from 1951 until 1953,[2] spending time studying history.[1] He enrolled in the Emory University School of Medicine at the age of 17,[1]graduating in 1957.[2] He trained at Grady Memorial Hospital as a urologist.

From 1959 to 1961 he served as a Flight Surgeon in the United States Navy stationed at theKeflavík naval base in Iceland. McDonald married an Icelandic national, Anna Tryggvadottir, with whom he would eventually have three children: Tryggvi Paul, Callie Grace, and Mary Elizabeth.[1]It was in Iceland that McDonald first began to take note of communism. He felt the U.S. Embassy was doing things advantageous to the Communists. He went to the commanding officer, but was told he did not understand the big picture.[1]

After his tour of service he practiced medicine at the McDonald Urology Clinic in Atlanta. He took an increasing interest in politics, reading books on political history and foreign policy.[1] He joined the John Birch Society—a conservative, anti-communist organization—in 1966 or 1967.[3][4] McDonald's passionate preoccupation with politics led to a divorce from his first wife.[1] McDonald made one unsuccessful run for Congress in 1972 before being elected in 1974. In 1975, he married Kathryn Jackson, whom he met while giving a speech in California.[1]

McDonald served as a member on the Georgia State Medical Education Board (as chairman 1969–1974[2]), the National Historical Societyand the Cobb County Chamber of Commerce and received numerous civil honors.

[edit]Political career

In 1974, McDonald ran for Congress against incumbent John W. Davis in the Democratic primary as a conservative who was opposed to mandatory federal school integration programs. McDonald successfully criticized Davis for being one of only two Georgia congressmen to vote in favor of busing. He was also effective in attacking Davis for receiving thousands of dollars in political donations from out-of-state groups, principally from New York City and Los Angeles. These groups favored mandatory federal programs that used busing to achieve school integration.[5] McDonald won the primary in a surprise upset and was elected in November 1974 to the 94th United States Congress, serving for Georgia's 7th congressional district, which included most of Atlanta's northwestern suburbs (including Marietta), where opposition to school busing was especially high. However, in the general election, J. Quincy Collins, Jr., an Air Force prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, running as a Republican, nearly defeated him, despite the poor performance of Republicans nationally that year due to the aftereffects of the Watergate scandal. McDonald, though, was re-elected four times with wide margins (including a 1976 rematch with Collins) and served from January 3, 1975, until his death, on September 1, 1983. His seat represented a contrast in political geography, as Republicans were successfully competing against moderate Democrats using the Southern strategy. Unlike many national Democrats, McDonald hewed to a consistently conservative line on issues such as foreign policy, defense spending, fiscal restraint, States rights, Gun rights, and Pro-life, while mounting a campaigns that successfully combined modern elements with a more traditional grassroots strategy. It paid off in the fall; while many of his fellow Democrats succumbed to Republican opponents or switched parties, McDonald managed to retain his seat.

McDonald—who considered himself a traditional Democrat "cut from the cloth of Jefferson and Jackson"[6]—was known for his conservative views, even by Southern standards. Given his Old Right and Southern views he was more conservative than the Republican party. In fact, one scoring method published in the American Journal of Political Science[7] named him the second most conservative member of either chamber of Congress between 1937 and 2002 (behind only Ron Paul).[8] The American Conservative Union gave him a perfect score of 100 every year he was in the House of Representatives, except in 1978, when he scored a 95.[9] He also scored "perfect or near perfect ratings" on the congressional scorecards of the National Right to Life Committee, Gun Owners of America, and the American Security Council.[10]Referred to by The New American as "the leading anti-Communist in Congress",[10] McDonald admired Senator Joseph McCarthy [11] and was a member of the Joseph McCarthy Foundation.[3] He took the communist threat seriously and considered it an international conspiracy. An admirer of Austrian economics and a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute,[3] he was an advocate of tight monetary policy in the late 1970s to get the economy out of stagflation, and advocated returning to the gold standard.[12] McDonald called the welfare state a "disaster"[13] and favored phasing control of the Great Society programs over to the states to operate and run.[14] He also favored cuts toforeign aid, saying "To me, foreign aid is an area that you not only can cut but you could take a chainsaw to in terms of reductions."[14]...

'I Am Not Anti-Semitic' � A Response from Ron Paul

LD Jackson
Political Realities

It was inevitable, I suppose – Once Ron Paul rose to the top-tier of candidates, it didn’t take long before the accusations began to fly.

Old theories about his supposed racism, fueled by the continued discussion of the newsletters published some two decades ago, have gained new traction in the media. The new and old media have both been regurgitating the accusations, in spite of Ron Paul having disavowed them and his attempts to prove them false. We now have a former staffer who has came forward, claiming to have extensive knowledge of the real Ron Paul. Eric Dondero has written a fairly long article about his associations with Paul, including his “insider” knowledge of how the Congressman “really feels” about a range of issues. What I find odd about this is how Dondero’s word has been accepted as gospel by most in the media, yet when the Paul campaign points out that he was fired for performance issues, the media asks that they provide proof of that.

When I endorsed Ron Paul for the GOP nomination for President, I did not intend to turn Political Realities into a cheerleader for his campaign. I have written about him when I felt the need to do so, as was the case when I defended him against Michelle Bachmann’s charge that he would be a dangerous President. Such would be the case now, as I see the charges of racism, anti-Semitism, of generally being out of touch with his foreign policy, mount against him. To raise that defense, I want to use an email interview of Ron Paul by Haaretz.com, which addresses the issues of how he feels about Israel and about racism and anti-Semitism. Out of the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Haaretz has a unique perspective, in that they are a Jewish website.

Q. What was your reaction to your exclusion from the function held by the Republican Jewish Coalition, to which all the rest of the candidates were invited?

Paul: Well, it was a bit surprising and disappointing. I believe that Israel is one of our most important friends in the world. And the views that I hold have many adherents in Israel today. Two of the tenets of a true Zionist are “self-determination” and “self-reliance.” I do not believe we should be Israel’s master but, rather, her friend. We should not be dictating her policies and announcing her negotiating positions before talks with her neighbors have even begun.

Q. The RJC characterized your views on Israel as “misguided and extreme”. Why do you think they view your views in that way?

Paul: I do not know, as I am the one candidate who would respect Israel’s sovereignty and not try to dictate to her about how she should deal with her neighbors. I supported Israel’s right to attack the Iraqi nuclear reactor in the 1980s, and I opposed President Obama’s attempt to dictate Israel’s borders this year.

Q. Do you think that the American debate on Israel is stifled?

Paul: There is no question that the problems of the Middle East have been intractable and may take new solutions and ideas. These ideas should all be openly discussed. I believe that my opinions have been distorted by those who want to continue America’s current role as world policeman, which we don’t have the money or manpower to sustain.

My philosophy, like that of the Founding Fathers, is that we should use our resources to protect our nation. Our policies of intervention and manipulation in Iran and Iraq and other places have led to unintended consequences and have not made Israel safer. Many in the Jewish community share my opinion, and it’s vital for both nations that we continue to have an open dialogue.

Q. In a 2007 clip that is on YouTube, you say, “Israel should be treated like everybody else”. Is that still your position, or do you believe that Israel and the United States have a “special relationship”?

Paul: Well, we do have some unique arrangements. We trade intelligence in areas when it serves our mutual interest, for instance. But I believe we have gone too far, to Israel’s detriment. Instead of being her friend, we have dominated her foreign policy.

Q. In that same clip, you also say that the motivation of al-Qaida for the 9/11 attacks was American support for Israel. Do you still believe that?

Paul: I think most people in the Middle East and probably in Israel would agree that this was a major factor. That in itself does not make our policies right or wrong. Our policies need to be discussed on their own merits, but as a matter of course, yes, our support of Israel has made us enemies.

Other U.S. policies, such as our stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia and our support for repressive regimes in the region, also play a role in hostilities to the U.S. Those in the Arab world who object to the U.S.’ support for dictatorships and to our military presence there often see Israel as the agent of the U.S. Thus, not only do Israel’s relations with the U.S. cause some negative feelings toward America, but they further Arab hostility toward Israel, which is one reason why Israel would be better off without U.S. aid.

Q. In the Fox News presidential debate you expressed understanding and even sympathy for the Iran having nuclear weapons. But Israelis view an Iranian nuclear capability as an existential threat to their country. Do you disagree? Do you not believe Iranian leaders who say that Israel should be “wiped off the map”?

Paul: I am against the spread of nuclear weapons. But I do understand why other nations want them and why they don’t accept the nuclear monopoly as it now stands. You cannot change an opinion you don’t understand. I understand it and would try to change it.
However, there’s a key fact that it seems is being overlooked when my positions are discussed. I believe I’m the only candidate who would allow Israel to take immediate action to defend herself without having to get our approval. Israel should be free to take whatever steps she deems necessary to protect her national security and sovereignty.

Q. Do you support completely cutting all foreign aid, including the aid to Israel?

Paul: Yes, I am personally against all foreign aid. We give $3 billion to Israel and $12 billion to her avowed enemies. How does that help Israel? And in return, we act like her master and demand veto power over her foreign policy.
If I were President, such aid would not end until the Congress agreed and voted for it to end, because I would be President as the U.S. Constitution defines it. I am not running for dictator.

But I believe that federal foreign aid is absurd. We’re broke! We are like a man who used to be rich and is in the habit of paying for everybody’s meals and announces at a lavish dinner that he will pay the bill, only to then turn to the fellow sitting nearby and say, “Can I use your credit card? I will pay you back.” It is ridiculous for us to be borrowing money from China and giving it to Pakistan.
I have described foreign aid as taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries. I know that many in other nations are hurting, but I also know that the American people are a generous people. While we should end the unconstitutional federal foreign aid program, I would encourage Americans to continue to voluntarily contribute to the needs of other nations.

Q. In the past, you have been accused by various groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, of accepting the support of racist and anti-Semitic elements and of not doing anything to distance yourself from them. What is your reaction to this accusation?

Paul: I have always made it clear, and will continue to do so, that my message is based on the rights of all people to be treated equally. Any type of racism or anti-Semitism is incompatible with my philosophy. Ludwig von Mises, the great economist whose writing helped inspire my political career, was a Jew who was forced to leave his native Austria to escape the Nazis. Mises wrote about the folly of seeing people as part of groups rather than as individuals. Therefore, for me to advance anti-Semitism in any way would be a betrayal of my own intellectual heritage.

I know a series of questions and answers via email is not a definitive answer to the charges that are being thrown at Ron Paul. However, I think his answers give us a little insight as to how the man thinks and how he approaches the issues facing our country. He clearly has nothing against Israel, but he does want them to be treated fairly and equally. He has a point, in that our financial aid to them is dwarfed by the financial aid we give to some of her enemies. We should think about that, long and hard, before we classify Paul’s desire to cut off foreign aid to Israel and every other country who is holding out their hand. In my humble opinion, Paul’s position on Israel makes perfect sense.

I am not the only person who holds this opinion. According to Dr. Leon Hadar, who advised was an adviser to Ron Paul during his 2008 campaign, Eric Dondero’s classification of Paul being anti-Israel is simply not true. From Haaretz.com:

Speaking with Haaretz on Tuesday, Hadar discounted Paul’s characterization as anti-Israel, saying: “He is against Israel as I am against January. He is just against foreign aid, and does not see any reason to grant an aid to the country that is a member of OECD.”

“We should remember it’s the primaries, and the Republican party establishment is not happy about his popularity, because on many issues his positions run contrary to the traditional party’s agenda,” Hadar added.

The former aide also indicated that Rep. Paul was in favor of “economic cooperation with Israel, he was interested in the economic reforms in Israel.”

“He will be glad to see the conflict resolved and he said it’s the right of Israel to attack Iran if it thinks that is necessary – but it shouldn’t expect the U.S. to clean the mess,” he said, adding that Paul is “very familiar with Israel’s history. I didn’t hear his conversations with his former aide, but I personally have never heard him say anything against Israel or the Jews.”

Referring to claims according to which Paul was in favor of “handing Israel back” to the Arabs, Hadar said it was “absurd to say he is more supportive of Arabs or Iran than Israel – he just thinks the U.S. shouldn’t meddle in other countries issues.”

“I think it’s quite pro-Israeli, because the U.S. won’t stay in the Middle East forever, and Israel should figure out how to deal with its challenges,” Hadar said, adding that there “is little doubt the current campaign against him and the attempts to paint him as anti-Israeli might cause him harm among the Evangelicals, whose support is more significant during the primaries than the Republican Jewish support.”

As you can see, there are two sides to this story. Before we automatically accept a former staffer’s word of how Ron Paul “really feels” on certain issues, we need to take it all into context. All may not be as it seems.

Magic mushrooms trip up brain activity

By Stephanie Pappas
Published January 23, 2012
LiveScience

The active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms decreases brain activity, possibly explaining the vivid, mind-bending effects of the drug, a new study finds.

The decreases were focused in regions that serve as crossroads for information in the brain, meaning that information may flow more freely in a brain on mushrooms. The findings could be useful in developing hallucinogenic treatments for some mental disorders.

"There is increasing evidence that the regions affected are responsible for giving us our sense of self," study author Robin Carhart-Harris, a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London, wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"In other words, the regions affected make up what some people call our 'ego.' That activity decreases in the 'ego-network' supports what people often say about psychedelics, that they temporarily 'dissolve the ego.'" [10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors]

Quieting the brain

Psilocybin, the chemical that gives mushrooms their trippy properties, has long-lasting effects beyond the initial high. A recent Johns Hopkins University study found that a single experience with psilocybin in a controlled environment can alter personality long-term, making people more open to new experiences.

"Healthy people given psilocybin often describe their experiences as among the most meaningful of their whole lives, comparable to such things as the birth of their first child or getting married," Carhart-Harris said. "We wanted to know what is going on in people's brains to produce such profound effects."

The researchers asked 15 people who had used mushrooms in the past to lie in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fRMI) scanner, which measures blood flow in the brain to determine brain activity in different regions.

After a few minutes, the researchers injected either psilocybin or a placebo into the participants' veins. (Each volunteer participated in two scans, so everyone had one experience with the hallucinogen and one with the placebo.) They then continued the scan to find out what changes occurred in brain activity.

A promising treatment?

The scans revealed a surprise: Psilocybin never increased activity in the brain, but only decreased activity in places, especially information transfer areas such as the thalamus, which sits smack in the middle of the brain.

"'Knocking out' these key hubs with psilocybin appears to allow information to travel more freely in the brain, probably explaining why people's imaginations become more vivid and animated and the world is experienced as unusual," Carhart-Harris said.

The researchers used multiple fMRI methods to validate their findings, and controlled for outside factors to be sure, for example, that psilocybin didn't cause breathing changes that, in turn, changed the brain. What actually seems to be happening, Carhart-Harris said, is that psilocybin mimics the effect of the brain chemical serotonin. In the brain, psilocybin sticks to serotonin receptors on brain cells, inhibiting the activity of those neurons. The effect lasts about a half-hour for a moderate dose given as an intravenous shot, Carhart-Harris said.

The researchers plan to further investigate these brain-bending effects as a treatment for depression. The regions quieted down by psilocybin are overactive in depression, Carhart-Harris said, so this mushroom ingredient could be an alternative treatment to lift mood.

But the findings aren't a license for anyone to start self-medicating with mushrooms, Carhart-Harris warned. The participants in this and other psilocybin studies have all been experienced and healthy psilocybin users in a controlled environment; some people can experience terrifying "bad trips" on psychedelics, he said. Without proper psychological care, the effects can be long-lasting and harmful.

"These are preliminary results, and a lot more research is required before claims can be made about the therapeutic value of psychedelics," Carhart-Harris said. "However, the initial signs are promising."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Rand Paul's Pat-Down Standoff With TSA in Nashville Ends

Jan 23, 2012 10:33am
By Sunlen Miller
Matt Hosford

Sen. Rand Paul told his communications director this morning he was being detained by TSA at the Nashville airport.

The Twitter account associated with Paul staffer Moira Bagley, @moirabagley, tweeted around 10 a.m., ET, “Just got a call from @senrandpaul. He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville.”

A TSA spokesman disputed that Paul was ever “detained.” But he was not granted access to the secure area of the airport when he tried to board a flight Monday morning.

The standoff was short-lived. By late morning, according to TSA, Paul had been booked on another flight and made it through the screening process.

The TSA version of events is that Paul triggered an alarm during routine airport screening and refused to complete the screening process (pat-down) in order to resolve the issue. Paul was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement.

“When an irregularity is found during the TSA screening process, it must be resolved prior to allowing a passenger to proceed to the secure area of the airport,” according to an official statement released by TSA. “Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process cannot be granted access to the secure area in order to ensure the safety of others traveling.”

Paul’s office confirmed he set off an airport security full-body scanner “on a glitch,” according to a spokesman.

The Paul staffer said TSA agents would not let Paul walk back through the body scanner and were demanding a full body pat-down.

The Paul spokesman said his office called TSA administrator John Pistole about the incident this morning.

The U.S. Constitution actually protects federal lawmakers from detention while they’re on the way to the capital.

“The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same….” according to Article I, Section 6.

The Senate is back in session today at 2 p.m., with votes scheduled at 4:30 p.m. It is not clear if Paul will make it to Washington by 4:30 p.m. on his new flight.

The issue of pat-downs has been an important one to Paul, the son of libertarian-leaning Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Sen. Paul brought this issue up at a hearing earlier this year.

Watch it here.

Ron Paul Slams �Out Of Control Police State� After Rand Paul Detained By TSA

Congressman renews his call to abolish agency that “gropes and grabs” Americans

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
January 23, 2012

GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul issued the following statement on his campaign website this afternoon, following his son Rand’s treatment at the hands of the TSA in Nashville.

“The police state in this country is growing out of control. One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors, and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities. The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe.

“That is why my ‘Plan to Restore America,’ in additional to cutting $1 trillion dollars in federal spending in one year, eliminates the TSA.

“We must restore the freedom and respect for liberty that once made American the greatest nation in human history. I am deeply committed to doing that as President of the United States.”

The website also posted a picture of Senator Rand Paul talking to reporters following the incident with the TSA:

Congressman Paul has been a long time critic of the TSA. In 2010 he introduced into the House the “American Traveler Dignity Act,” which would remove TSA agents’ immunity from prosecution for implementing invasive pat-down procedures. Paul re-introduced the legislation in the summer.

Subculture of Americans prepares for civilization's collapse

By Jim Forsyth
Sat Jan 21, 2012 11:44am EST

(Reuters) - When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon.

"In an instant, anything can happen," she told Reuters. "And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared."

Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as "preppers." Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.

They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government.

Preppers, though are, worried about no government.

Tegeler, 57, has turned her home in rural Virginia into a "survival center," complete with a large generator, portable heaters, water tanks, and a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently gave her as a birthday present. She says that in case of emergency, she could survive indefinitely in her home. And she thinks that emergency could come soon.

"I think this economy is about to fall apart," she said.

A wide range of vendors market products to preppers, mainly online. They sell everything from water tanks to guns to survival skills.

Conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck seems to preach preppers' message when he tells listeners: "It's never too late to prepare for the end of the world as we know it."

"Unfortunately, given the increasing complexity and fragility of our modern technological society, the chances of a societal collapse are increasing year after year," said author James Wesley Rawles, whose Survival Blog is considered the guiding light of the prepper movement.

A former Army intelligence officer, Rawles has written fiction and non-fiction books on end-of-civilization topics, including "How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It," which is also known as the preppers' Bible.

"We could see a cascade of higher interest rates, margin calls, stock market collapses, bank runs, currency revaluations, mass street protests, and riots," he told Reuters. "The worst-case end result would be a Third World War, mass inflation, currency collapses, and long term power grid failures."...

Tuesday Weld Gets Her Kicks On Route 666

by Kenn Thomas
Steamshovel Press

An episode of the old Route 66 show called "Aren't You Surprised To See Me?" aired in Dallas on February 16, 1962. It takes place in Dallas/Ft. Worth and opens with the villain making a connection at Love Field, the airport into which JFK flew on the day he was killed more than a year later. The protagonists of the show, TV versions of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady "On The Road" in a '62 Corvette, get jobs at the Trade Mart, where JFK planned to go to make a speech the day he died. At one point someone's talking on the phone references Earle Cabell, the Dallas mayor whose brother Charles was fired by JFK as deputy director of the CIA because of the Bay of Pigs failure.

Route 66 is famous for having captured in its backgrounds an authentic American cultural landscape before it was homogenized into malls. So here viewers find a straight look at the Dallas environs from the time of the assassination. The plot involved one of the guys (George Maharis, playing the Cassady figure but looking and talking a lot like Kerouac) being kidnapped by a killer ready to dose the entire town with a deadly biotoxin. The killer is some kind of a religious fanatic who soliloquizes about absolute morality while Maharis/Kerouac talks moral relativism. So it's also a picture of the kind of values debate that was happening on mainstream television at the time as well.

The eerie associations don't stop at that point on Route 66, hoevever: In a separate episode, "Love Is A Skinny Kid," filmed in Lewisville, Texas at the same time as the one in Dallas, Tuesday Weld plays a character called Miriam Moore, a name that looks like Marilyn Monroe sideways. Her character wears a mask that she refuses to take off, upsetting the town folk. The opening shot shows Maharis and Milner (Kerouac and Cassady) driving past a highway sign indicating the upcoming towns: Dallas, Waco (in Texas weirdland alright), and the one where the action takes place: Kilkenny, a word that looks like "Kill Kennedy" run together.

Filmed in 1962, again, one year before the assassination. Of the three towns, Kilkenny stands out as the only one that's totally fictional, created for this episode. A Kilkenny in Ireland exists and the internet can produce one reference to a street called Kilkenny in Texas, but not a town. In any event, newsclippings appear online discussing how the Route 66 people gave the town of Lewisville, TX a makeover to turn it into the fictional Kilkenny.

Tuesday Weld steps off the bus into Kilkenney wearing what looks like a Guy Fawkes mask that she refuses to remove. She walks to her mother's house and burns a doll at the stake. As the plot unfolds, the viewer discovers that as a young girl Weld's character had a friend tie her to a tree and then tried to set fire to herself (for which she was instituionalized and banished from the town). Druid Occultism? She explains to ner former school teacher that her behavior was a product of a school system that didn't attend to the special needs of the children "bored with two plus two".

The JFK links all appear in the two episodes as just remarkable coincidences, of course. Elsewhere the dialogue also includes the phrase "V for Vendetta," referring to Weld's need to spook the town folks with the mask. The strange mask looks a lot like the one that Alan Moore's character wears in his famous V for Vendetta graphic novel, which began appearing in 1982.

Another weird JFK-Route 66 fact: the network canceled the episode from a week after the assassination, November 29, 1963, and that one never aired during the show's original run. It had as its plot the bizarre coincidence of the Tod Stiles character, played by Martin Milner, encountering a political assassin, his double--also played by Milner. Multiple Milners, as in the infamous multiple Oswalds seen around Dallas the week before the intended original broadcast. Title of the episode: "I'm Here To Kill the King."

At one point Jack Kerouac planned to sue the producers of Route 66 for aping his classic novel. At the time, he said of the show that he abhored its violence.

Kenn Thomas has authored many conspiracy books, most recently JFK & UFO, from Feral House. He co-edited Secret and Suppressed II , also published by Feral House, with Adam Parfrey, contaning an essay on Tuesday Weld's rumored connection to Druid occultism. . He can be reached at steamshovelpress.com or via e-mail at SteamshovelPress@gmail.com.