Friday, October 1, 2010

News from the Network, Vol. 3, No. 39

Most of this week has been spent enjoying the announced end of the Great Recession . . . and getting ready for the slide into The Great Depression, Part III: The Bloodening. In response to yesterday's posting about the Great Keynesian Bloodletting, Guy Stevenson of Iowa sent a link to a cartoon, presumably recent (we couldn't read any date, even after blowing it up as far as possible) graphically depicting what we so eloquently described in words.

The rest of the week has been spent in preparing for meetings and rallies, and going to meetings — or not going when the pressure builds up to the point where the safety valve flips and everybody starts blowing off steam. We've also been trying valiantly to keep up with the administrative details of keeping all the organizations here running. It's the end of the fiscal year, so that means a bundle of tasks that don't have to be done at any other time come flooding in.

Nevertheless, we've managed to get a few things done to advance the Just Third Way:

• On Thursday Norman Kurland went to a meeting on "How to Fix the Budget" presented by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He managed to get copies of Supporting Life, Capital Homesteading, and (very important at this stage) The Formation of Capital into the hands of a number of key people. Whether the ideas in the books "turn the key" is another issue, but it is critical to continue working to open doors and minds to the Just Third Way. Among the people to whom Norm distributed books and other materials were Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin's First District, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Bill Frenzel, former Congressman representing Minnesota's Third District (a chunk of Minneapolis) and now with the Brookings Institution, of which Dr. Harold G. Moulton was president from 1916 to 1952.

• Previously Norm had gone to a Cato Institute function, and gotten copies of Moulton's book to Fernando Menéndez of the Atlas Foundation and Paul Boettke of George Mason University.

• Also at Thursday's gathering Norm was able to get a copy of The Formation of Capital into the hands of Bill Galsten, also of Brookings, as well as a summary of the Capital Homestead Act.

• Later on Thursday Norm and Joe Recinos met with Fernando Menéndez, who thought a meeting after the end of the current semester to arrange a debate on Moulton's ideas would be a possible project. Assuming that the debate can be arranged, all Just Third Way supporters should plan to attend, if possible.

• We came across a posting by an Irish author, Ronan Scully, in a LinkedIn group this morning. Mr. Scully, who has just written a spiritual book, Hold That Thought (not yet "out"), has scored a coup in getting the Taoiseach, the Irish Head of State, to launch the book. We took the opportunity to post a comment to the effect that Mr. Scully might want to see if he could get Mr. Cowen, the Taoiseach, interested in something that might present an alternative to the current phase of the ongoing economic crisis in Éire. We wouldn't be surprised if you were able to discover Mr. Scully's e-mail address by googling "Ronan Scully" and "Galway Independent," giving yourself the ability to send him a short note that he might find the Just Third Way of interest.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 37 different countries and 44 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, the UK, Canada, Brazil, and Australia. People in Bangladesh, the United States, Italy, India, and Canada spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular posting is the one on "The New Banking Rules," followed by "The Case for the 'Repeal Amendment'," "The New Manifest Destiny" "We are Seeing the Future and It Doesn't Work," and, finally, the review of Tom Kratman's State of Disobedience.
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.

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