Focus on President Obama's near-trillion dollar "stimulus" package seems to be diverting people's attention away from more effective solutions to the financial crisis, such as Capital Homesteading.
We've begun posting a series on why the stimulus package will, in all likelihood, not have the intended effect, but have also managed to carry out some "off-the-blog" activities as well.
• On Monday, January 26, Michael D. Greaney, CESJ's Director of Research, returned from a short trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The economic situation in Lancaster, in common with the rest of the country outside the Washington, DC Beltway, is dire. People inside the Beltway may have it hard, but the federal government (the largest employer in the area) has not yet started laying off people, so those who work for the government or whose jobs depend in some way on the government are being shielded to a certain extent. This may explain the otherwise inexplicable support for a "stimulus" package that combines a great deal of political pork with spending that is either unproductive or concentrates power in the hands of the State. Yesterday morning's comment by an economist on television that the way to get out of the current financial crisis is for the government to spend more, while it makes perfect sense within the unique economy inside the Beltway, does nothing to bolster confidence of people in the real world.
• On Tuesday, CESJ sent a brief letter to Father Cassian Yuhaus, Rector of the Shrine of St. Ann's Basilica in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a member of the CESJ Board of Counselors, to ask for his assistance in arranging a meeting with His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, both to follow up on a series of meetings with the late Pope John Paul II, and to present the Holy Father with the Abraham Federation as a possible solution to the increased violence in the Holy Land.
• Also on Tuesday CESJ sent a letter to His Excellency, the Hon. Hjálmar W. Hannesson, Ph.D., Ambassador of Iceland, to acquaint him with the possibilities offered by the Just Third Way to save the Icelandic economy from what appears from news reports to be a virtual shambles. His Excellency was educated in Ireland (University College, Dublin), so we mentioned to him the fact that a number of Irish politicians are beginning to give serious consideration to CESJ's Capital Homesteading proposals.
• On Wednesday . . . we shoveled snow and chipped ice. More importantly, we also began the series of blog postings on why we believe that Mr. Obama's stimulus package is headed in exactly the wrong direction. We will probably not post the entries on successive days, but we do expect to complete the series within two weeks. We urge that you follow the series carefully, and if you think it worthwhile, you might want to forward links to your Representative in the Congress and both your Senators, as well as the governor of your state and your representatives in the state legislature. If you are not a U.S. citizen, consider sending a link or two to your own government (especially if you happen to live in Iceland or Ireland), along with links to the CESJ web site together with a short explanation that the material on the web site might suggest some possibilities for economic recovery that do not rely on 1) deficit spending or 2) foreign investment.
• Sales for Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen, listed on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, as well as In Defense of Human Dignity, ditto, ditto, have been encouraging, but could be better. We remind you that these books can be very effective ways to acquaint friends, neighbors, business associates, and (especially) religious and political leaders with possibilities for economic recovery that are not rooted in bankrupt (and bankrupting) Keynesian economics. You don't have to be a CESJ member or a licensed retailer to get the wholesale price — $4.00 off the retail price, plus $1.50 per copy for shipping within the continental United States — when you purchase 10 or more copies directly from CESJ in a single order sent to the same address (and they don't have to all be the same title, just as long as you order a minimum of ten copies total). William Cobbett's The Emigrant's Guide is also available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and can be purchased in wholesale lots from CESJ on the same terms as Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen and In Defense of Human Dignity, and can be "mixed and matched" with those two titles. (Sorry — Curing World Poverty (1994) was put out by a different publisher in conjunction with CESJ, and isn't included in this offer because it was printed by a different company than we use now.)
• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 18 different countries and 39 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Over the same period we have experienced over 100% increase in total readership, according to the statistics counter of "Google Analytics." Visitors from the Republic of Ireland (Éire) have increased 800% according to Google, with the most popular "key word" search being "solution to economic crisis in Ireland," and "is Irish government Keynesian." We received a comment from a lady in Ireland a few weeks ago who was pleasantly surprised that some of the Irish politicians to whom we sent brief descriptions of the Just Third Way and Capital Homesteading responded in a positive manner, notably Mr. Charlie O'Connor, of the Dublin South West constituency, who gives indications of serious interest in Capital Homesteading. Evidently, if Irish politicians want an "easy" way to be both popular and effective, Capital Homesteading offers some definite possibilities. Visitors from California (according to last night's news, the "eighth largest economy in the world") have increased nearly 150%, so perhaps Governor Schwarzenegger and members of the state legislature in Sacramento will soon be receiving some letters from concerned residents of the Golden State. (That's a hint, by the way.) In the U.S., more people visit from New York (both city and state) than any other region. Our most popular postings continue to be those dealing with the problems associated with Keynesian economics and the seriously flawed solutions that are being implemented to solve the world's economic and financial problems, although our most popular posting by far is "Inauguration Means Beginning."
Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we'll see that it gets into the next "issue." If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.
