Yesterday I realized something I said in that piece wasn’t quite accurate. No, no, don’t get ahead of me. I’m not about to retract anything I said about any of my favorite columns or columnists. But in reading the last item on my recommended list I realized I wasn’t entirely fair in my description.

I said that Daily Wealth gives more genuinely valuable contrarian investment advice than any other website I know of. And they do it for free (if you don’t count all the ads you’ll receive) six times a week.

That’s still true. But what I should have added is that every once in a while you’ll get some political commentary that is so right-on-the-mark you’ll wish you had said it first. At least that’s how I felt last week, when I read “This Is Why There Are No Jobs in America” by my good friend Porter Stansberry.

I liked it so much that I got the publisher’s permission to share it with you today. Read it and see if you don’t agree. If you do, then check out www.dailywealth.com on your own. I think you’ll enjoy what you find. Now, here’s the piece that impressed me so much:

I’d like to make you a business offer…

Seriously. This is a real offer. In fact, you really can’t turn me down, as you’ll come to understand in a moment.

Here’s the deal. You’re going to start a business or expand the one you’ve got now. It doesn’t really matter what you do or what you’re going to do. I’ll partner with you no matter what business you’re in — as long as it’s legal.

But I can’t give you any capital — you have to come up with that on your own. I won’t give you any labor — that’s definitely up to you. What I will do, however, is demand you follow all sorts of rules about what products and services you can offer, how much (and how often) you pay your employees, and where and when you’re allowed to operate your business. That’s my role in the affair: to tell you what to do.

Now in return for my rules, I’m going to take roughly half of whatever you make in the business each year. Half seems fair, doesn’t it? I think so. Of course, that’s half of your profits.

You’re also going to have to pay me about 12 percent of whatever you decide to pay your employees, because you’ve got to cover my expenses for promulgating all of the rules about who you can employ, when, where, and how. Come on, you’re my partner. It’s only "fair."

Now… after you’ve put your hard-earned savings at risk to start this business, and after you’ve worked hard at it for a few decades (paying me my 50 percent or a bit more along the way each year), you might decide you’d like to cash out — to finally live the good life.

Whether or not this is "fair" — some people never can afford to retire — is a different argument. As your partner, I’m happy for you to sell whenever you’d like… because our agreement says, if you sell, you have to pay me an additional 20 percent of whatever the capitalized value of the business is at that time.

I know… I know… you put up all the original capital. You took all the risks. You put in all of the labor. That’s all true. But I’ve done my part, too. I’ve collected 50 percent of the profits each year. And I’ve always come up with more rules for you to follow each year. Therefore, I deserve another, final 20 percent slice of the business.

Oh… and one more thing…

Even after you’ve sold the business and paid all of my fees, I’d recommend buying lots of life insurance. You see, even after you’ve been retired for years, when you die, you’ll have to pay me 50 percent of whatever your estate is worth.

After all, I’ve got lots of partners and not all of them are as successful as you and your family. We don’t think it’s “fair” for your kids to have such a big advantage. But if you buy enough life insurance, you can finance this expense for your children.

All in all, if you’re a very successful entrepreneur … if you’re one of the rare, lucky, and hard-working people who can create a new company, employ lots of people, and satisfy the public … you’ll end up paying me more than 75 percent of your income over your life. Thanks so much.

I’m sure you’ll think my offer is reasonable and happily partner with me … but it doesn’t really matter how you feel about it, because if you ever try to stiff me — or cheat me on any of my fees or rules — I’ll break down your door in the middle of the night, threaten you and your family with heavy, automatic weapons, and throw you in jail.

That’s how civil society is supposed to work, right? This is America, isn’t it?

That’s the offer America gives its entrepreneurs. And the idiots in Washington wonder why there are no new jobs.

And your editor returns. Well, that was something, wasn’t it? If any of you disagree with Porter’s arguments, I know you’ll be happy to tell me so below. I’ll be interested to see how some of my fervid critics (and I’m glad there are some of you out there, I really am) respond to his arguments.

In conclusion, let me mention two things. One, I saw an item in the news a few days ago that said Americans are fleeing the stock market in droves. In the first six months of this year, more than $33 billion was pulled out of stock mutual funds. That is, investors pulled $33 billion more dollars out of the market than they put in. That is a heck of a vote of “no confidence” in the Obama Administration’s efforts to fix our economy.

The second thing is that I promised the folks at Stansberry & Associates I’d give Porter’s monthly newsletter a plug, in return for them letting me reprint his rant. So here it is: To read more from Porter, sign up for his outstanding Investment Advisory. His latest issue — which covers the coming crisis brought on by the United States government — details exactly what he sees ahead and how to profit (and protect yourself). For details on how to gain immediate access to his report, click here.

If you think I ended this week on a downer I’m sorry, but next week will be worse. The working title of that column is “The Conspiracy that Is the Federal Reserve.” Stay tuned.

Until next time, keep some powder dry.

— Chip Wood

That was back in the days before Personal Liberty Alerts started sending my musings to more than 500,000 people every week. No, in the fall of 2007 I had just 1,000 or 2,000 readers, most of them were probably named Wood.

So the column below didn’t reach very many people. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to run it again. Because the message it contains is quite literally a matter of life and death for every one of us. See if you don’t agree. Here it is.

Like me, you were no doubt sickened by the news from Newark, New Jersey that three young college students, Terrance Aeriel, Dashon Harvey and Iofemi Hightower, were ruthlessly murdered at a school playground. Each was forced to kneel on the ground and then shot, execution-style, with a bullet to the brain.

What you may not have heard is that the person accused of the crime, a 28-year-old thug named Jose Lachira Carranza, was in this country illegally — and the authorities knew it. His alleged colleague in this heinous crime is also an illegal alien.

Moreover, this was not Carranza’s first or only vicious assault. He had been arrested just one month earlier and charged with repeatedly raping a 5-year-old girl and threatening to kill her family if anyone called the police. A year earlier he was charged with assaulting patrons at a bar.

One of the better commentaries I’ve read on this topic is by former House Speaker (and soon to be presidential candidate?) Newt Gingrich. In his weekly column, he wrote, “There is a war here at home and it is even more deadly than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Far more Americans are being killed by violent, evil people here in America than in our official military ‘combat zones’ overseas.

“The truth is, all too many Americans are being killed. But what is so completely senseless is having the lives of three young, achieving college students cut brutally short by someone who not only should not have been in the United States in the first place but also, after two previous arrests for violence, should not have been on the streets. Instead, the suspected killer should have been in jail awaiting trial, sentencing, prison and eventual deportation.”

And then Gingrich reminds us of a story I’d almost forgotten:

“New Jersey was already in the news for its failure to protect its citizens from illegal aliens when the federal government arrested six would-be terrorists for plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix. We soon learned that three of them had been illegally in the U.S. for 23 years, during which they had been charged by the New Jersey police more than 75 times. And still, our government never discovered they were here illegally.”

The former congressman then points his finger at the real culprit:

 ”…the government of the United States is not protecting the people of America.”

He continues:

“The federal government’s incompetence, timidity and uncoordinated efforts to identify and deport criminal illegal aliens have had devastating consequences for innocent Americans.”

Rather than just rail against injustice, though, Gingrich proposed a solution to this tragic situation. He called for new legislation, named after the three murder victims in Newark. “The Terrance Aeriel, Dashon Harvey, Iofemi Hightower Act” would do five things:

1. It would demand that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security develop a real-time identification system to check the legal status of every felon in America. 
    
2. Every person arrested for a felony will be checked against the Federal database. Unless there is positive evidence they are American citizens or are here legally, they will be detained. If they are here illegally they will be deported. (This sounds remarkably like what the citizens of Arizona asked their police to do, doesn’t it? We know how Washington reacted to that.)
    
3. And here’s one I love: Any city, county or state that refuses to participate in checking every felony arrest will immediately lose all of its Federal aid. (Hey, San Francisco, that would mean losing a bunch of taxpayer money, wouldn’t it?)
    
4. No illegal alien will be released back into the population at large to prey upon new victims. After they finish the time for their crime, they will be detained until they can be deported. (A question from Chip: Why feed and house them at our expense? Let’s send them back where they came from immediately.)
    
5. All current prisons in the U.S. will be screened to identify those who are here illegally. The illegal alien prisoners will be deported to their countries of origin once they’ve completed their sentences. (I repeat the question I asked above: Why keep ‘em here at all? Let’s send them back just as soon as the courts say we can.)
    
6. I’ve argued in the past that it’s usually a mistake to ask the Federal government to solve a problem. In my experience, every time they try they create new problems that are bigger and more costly than the one they promised to eliminate. In the process, the budget gets bigger and the bureaucracy gets more bloated. A good rule of thumb is, Don’t feed the monster.

But this is an approach I can endorse. After all, what is government’s first and most sacred obligation? Isn’t it to protect its own citizens from assault; to guard against attacks on our persons or threats to our property by “all enemies, foreign and domestic?”

No, we can’t prevent every crime by every illegal alien. But we can make certain that, once caught, he never gets a chance to prey on an innocent victim again… at least, not in this country.

I’ll let you know when (or if) the Aeriel-Harvey-Hightower Act gets introduced in Congress. And what happens when it does.

Back To The Present
Of course the legislation Gingrich proposed has never seen the light of day in Congress. Instead, all of the publicity recently has been about Barack Obama’s determination to stop Arizona from doing precisely what the former Speaker demanded our Federal government do to protect all of us.

At the end of his column three years ago, Gingrich wrote, “We should demand more of our leaders — or we should get new leaders.”

That’s still a good idea — even though I suspect he is one of the “new leaders” he’s talking about.

Until next time, keep some powder dry.

 — Chip Wood

And some, like the items below, are anonymous. I don't kn]]> http://www.personalliberty.com/chip-shots/internet-post-looks-ahead/feed/ 0 http://www.personalliberty.com/this-week-in-history/the-united-nations-moves-in/ http://www.personalliberty.com/this-week-in-history/the-united-nations-moves-in/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:01:08 +0000 Chip Wood http://www.personalliberty.com/?p=16234 It was 60 years ago this Saturday, on Aug. 21, 1950, that the advocates of one-world government and defenders of murderous tyrannies and corrupt dictators got the world headquarters they had sought for nearly a century. The United Nations moved in]]> http://www.personalliberty.com/this-week-in-history/the-united-nations-moves-in/feed/ 3 http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/liberty/what-websites-do-you-read/ http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/liberty/what-websites-do-you-read/#comments Fri, 13 Aug 2010 03:01:54 +0000 Chip Wood http://www.personalliberty.com/?p=16108 In response to hundreds of reader inquiries—well, at least three—I’m going to devote this week’s column to describing some of the other websites I read every week. If some in the list below are new to you, I hope you’ll check them out. You may find yet another “must read” columnist you’ll want to check out every week.

But we’re also going to practice equal time here. I encourage you to use the comments section at the end of this week’s Straight Talk to tell me about a writer or website you find especially worthwhile. After all, the more readers the good guys and gals get, the better for all of us.

So what do I read every week? Here are nearly a dozen columns and columnists I commend to your attention.

*Personal Liberty Digest. What did you expect? Of course I’m going to mention my own publisher first. After all, this is where you’ll find three of my efforts every week—Straight Talk and Chip Shots on Friday and This Week in History on Wednesday. But PLD publishes a bunch of other important stuff every week. I find the columns by Bob Livingston and John Myers especially worth reading. I like the book reviews and letters to Bob as well. If www.personalliberty.com is not already white-listed as one of your favorites you should do that now.

*Human Events does triple duty for me. The weekly newspaper is one of the oldest conservative publications in the country. It’s been produced continuously since 1944, and while it’s sometimes a tad too “Republican” for me, every issue has a story that the mainstream media have somehow missed.

But Human Events isn’t just a newsweekly. It is also home to several columnists, including two of my all-time favorites, Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan. Pat’s knowledge of history and his powerful defense of Americanist values are simply unmatched. And nobody can skewer liberals faster or with more deadly accuracy than Coulter. I usually like what she says; but I often love how she says it.

Thank goodness she gave up a law practice for journalism. Find them (and many others, including Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Chuck Norris) at www.humanevents.com.

*The New American is both a twice-a-month publication and an invaluable website; both are jam-packed with articles and opinion pieces you simply won’t find anywhere else. The magazine was formed by the merger of two previous publications—American Opinion, where I once contributed several articles, and The Review of the News, where I was the original news editor. TNA is owned by the John Birch Society, so you can count on getting a hard-right interpretation of the major stories of the day. Check it out at www.thenewamerican.com.

*Gary Bauer’s “End of Day Report.” I have long suspected that Gary is triplets; otherwise I don’t understand how he accomplishes as much as he does. His commentary on the day’s events in Washington is, as his website says, “unapologetically pro-family, pro-life, and pro-growth.” It is also unmistakably pro-Israel and pro-Christian. No pabulum here, nothing but strong red meat. See for yourself at www.cwfpac.com.

*Best of the Web Today (The Wall Street Journal Online). Nobody can accuse James Taranto of being unbiased. There isn’t a liberal politician or pundit he doesn’t delight in exposing. And I’ve got to tell you, he does it a lot better than most. He does it in depth, on several topics, nearly every day of the week. Unfortunately, this one is not a freebie—you have to be a subscriber to the online version of The Wall Street Journal to get it. But The Journal publishes so much other worthwhile material (including Peggy Noonan every Saturday) that I recommend signing up. Go to www.online.wsj.com and see if you don’t agree.

Politics isn’t all I read about, of course. In fact, my literary consumption these days is pretty evenly divided between politics, economics and history—with the occasional mystery story thrown in. So now let’s shift from the political battlegrounds to the economic ones. Here are some of my favorite financial websites.

*The Daily Reckoning was started by my friend Bill Bonner—the founder and president of Agora Publications—a dozen years ago, when he decided to “figure out this Internet thing.” What began as a daily commentary sent to a few friends over the Internet has grown into a publishing phenomenon, with a large stable of contributors—so many, in fact, that the daily ezine can’t hold them all. Nobody tells “truth to power” better than Bill. See for yourself at www.dailyreckoning.com.

*John Mauldin and Gary Halbert are two other friends who write a column every week about some truly important issues. John concentrates more on the economic side of the ledger (and often gives you more charts in one issue than I want to see in a month). But for those who like really thoughtful—and thought-provoking—economic analysis, go to www.investorsinsight.com and read a couple of his articles. Chances are you’ll be back for more.

While you’re at the Investors Insight website, do yourself a favor and read Gary Halbert’s latest essay. I particularly like the way Gary takes one major subject each week and really gnaws on it for a while. I have found his research to be impeccable, his analysis sound, and his conclusions sometimes frightening but always thoughtful. He is definitely another “worth your time” writer.

*Daily Wealth gives more genuinely valuable contrarian investment advice than any other website I know of. And they do it for free (if you don’t count all the ads you’ll receive) six times a week. I’ve known many of their columnists for years and consider them personal friends. But friendship aside, let me assure you, you could do a lot worse than to listen to Steve Sjuggerud, Tom Dyson and Daily Wealth’s other contributors. You’ll find them at www.dailywealth.com.

So there you have it—almost a dozen columnists and commentators who are on my “must read” list every week. Of course there are many other writers whose work I enjoy and many other websites I use in my research. But these are the ladies and gentlemen I would read every week, whether I had a column to write or not.

So please give them a look; you just might like them. And not only like them, but learn from them as well.

Now, I look forward to learning from you.

Until next time, keep some powder dry.

—Chip Wood