The FOMC released its latest statement on Wednesday.  The big news is that the Fed will keep its target rate between zero and 1/4 percent.  This is the federal funds rate, which is the overnight borrowing rate for banks.

Since the banks have a pile of excess reserves, they don’t need to borrow money overnight to meet reserve requirements.  Therefore, the rate stays near zero.  The only way for the Fed to effectively raise this rate – short of selling trillions of dollars in assets to drain bank reserves – is to pay a higher interest rate on bank reserves.

The key point here is that the federal funds rate – the rate that everyone is talking about – has almost no correlation to the actual money supply at this point.  The Fed can raise its rate, but this doesn’t dictate its control over the money supply as it did in the past.  The Fed can inflate or deflate the money supply, and it will not affect the federal funds rate, unless the deflation were severe.

Perhaps the federal funds rate will impact market interest rates, but that isn’t even clear at this point.  The market has been anticipating a hike by the Fed for quite some time, yet interest rates only just recently went up a bit.  And that was after going down, despite the market’s anticipation of a Fed hike.

The Fed is currently in a tight money mode.  It has been since QE3 ended in late 2014.  But QE3 was huge.  To put this in perspective, QE3 created more money out of thin air than the first 95 years of the Federal Reserve’s existence.

We shouldn’t be worrying so much about the Fed hiking the federal funds rate.  This will just be a further bank bailout.  The bigger questions are what the economy is going to do and how the Fed will respond.

If we have another quarter of negative GDP, then we will be in a recession by definition.  And what happens if the stock market crashes by 30 or 40 percent?  Is the Fed going to sit on its hands?

The real question is whether the Fed will respond to an economic downturn with more QE (monetary inflation).  And if this does happen, will we finally see price inflation show up more significantly?

We will continue to keep our eye on the ball and not the distraction of the federal funds rate.  The money supply is what matters the most.

The list of Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential election keeps growing.  I cannot recall any time in the last several decades where there have been so many major candidates.  The following is a list of major candidates or likely candidates.

• Jeb Bush
• Ben Carson
• Chris Christie (not officially declared)
• Ted Cruz
• Carly Fiorina
• Lindsey Graham
• Mike Huckabee
• Bobby Jindal (not officially declared)
• George Pataki
• Rand Paul
• Rick Perry
• Marco Rubio
• Rick Santorum
• Donald Trump
• Scott Walker (not officially declared)

I did not include other candidates that are not well-known because they have virtually no chance in this field.

There are at least a dozen well-known candidates already in the race, with the likelihood of more coming.  Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, it is Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley.  I expect there to be one main challenger for Hillary Clinton, and it will not likely be Bernie Sanders.

I am not going to go through each Republican candidate at this time.  They are all too much alike.  They are mostly pro war.  They will talk a good game about fiscal conservatism – some more than others – but most of them are part of the establishment and generally favor big government.

Bush would be interesting if he goes up against Clinton.  I would wonder if the American people would finally wake up that we live in some kind of oligopoly.  “Oh, it’s Bush vs. Clinton.  For some reason, that sounds familiar.  Where have I seen that before?”

The most notable candidates to me are Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, and Donald Trump.

The reason I include Lindsey Graham is because he is the major war hawk.  They are all pro-war to some degree, but Graham is frightening in just how much he continually bangs the war drums.  He should be the most feared candidate for anyone.  I hope his campaign goes down in flames quickly.

I have written several times before about Rand Paul.  He is the closest thing to libertarian in the race, and he is pretty far away.  He distinguished himself from the field recently in his stance against NSA spying, but I believe it was mostly for political show, as we ended up with something that is probably worse.

As a libertarian, I do not support Rand Paul.  I don’t want to have to defend the things he says and does.  I don’t want to have to explain to anyone why he thinks Edward Snowden belongs in a jail cell or why we need to fight ISIS.

Just think about the Republicans who are still defending George W. Bush.  It is really pathetic.  I can just imagine some quasi-libertarians having to defend their support for Rand Paul.  “Well, he had to support the $4 trillion budget so that he can get re-elected to a second term.  Then we will finally see smaller government.”

Rand Paul would probably be another Ronald Reagan.  He would talk a good game, but he would play ball with the establishment.  Besides, when we get a lot of problems with all of the current malinvestment built up, I don’t want libertarianism to get the blame.

Finally, there is Donald Trump, who just entered the race.  Part of me likes Donald Trump because he speaks his mind.  He is different from the average politician.  He is also not a Bush apologist, particularly when it comes to the Iraq War.

Don’t get me wrong here, because Trump has some bad positions.  He is far from being a libertarian.  But, if anything, he should make the Republican race more interesting and entertaining.

The general election is still well over a year away, but we aren’t far off from the initial debates.  Before you know it, we will be talking about primaries.

I am anti-politician, but I still take an interest in politics, if nothing else for my own awareness of what to expect.  I will do occasional updates on the political situation.

In the past, I would do regular updates of the adjusted monetary base.  This is a chart that the Federal Reserve directly controls.  The monetary base shows us what the Fed is doing in terms of buying and selling assets.

What the monetary base does not tell us is price inflation.  In fact, it doesn’t even give us a good picture of monetary inflation because it does not account for fractional reserve lending.  Because much of the newly created money of the last 7 years went into bank reserves, it did not multiply through the system.  This is one of the major reasons that price inflation has not been commensurate with the increase in base money.

As expected, the adjusted monetary base has been relatively flat since late 2014.  The Fed is doing what it said it would do.  Since the end of QE3 in late 2014, it has maintained an essentially neutral monetary policy in the sense that it is not buying or selling assets.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE/

It is rolling over maturing debt, so the Fed is still buying in that sense. But its overall balance sheet is staying the same.

There are slight variations, which we will always see.  Due to maturing debt and other possible factors, even a neutral policy will show minor ups and downs.  But for the most part, the monetary base has been flat for the last 8 months.

We should expect this to continue until we hear anything different from the Fed.

I know all of the current talk is about interest rates.  They say interest rates, but really it is just the federal funds rate.  This is the overnight borrowing rate for banks, which has been near zero for nearly 7 years because the big commercial banks have massive piles of excess reserves.  They don’t need overnight borrowing to meet reserve requirements.

The only feasible way the Fed can raise this rate is by paying a higher rate on bank reserves.  This will not change the monetary base.

The bigger question at this point is what the Fed will do if we see another major economic downturn.  We already saw a negative first quarter GDP.  What happens if the second quarter is bad?  What happens if we see a major stock market correction?

I don’t care that much about the federal funds rate except in so much as it affects investor sentiment.  I care about when QE4 will arrive.  That is when we will see the monetary base jump higher again.  That is when I will be looking for the possibility of significantly higher price inflation.

“Speaking of Obama, he presented a $4 trillion budget that he says would help the middle class.  And then the middle class said, ‘You know what, how about just giving us $4 trillion?  That will help us.  We will figure it out.  We’ll figure out what to do with it.'”

~Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show

I recently read a piece on Marketwatch, which is a fairly conventional financial news site.  It is titled “Tax rates are far higher than we realize”.  But the beginning of the article starts out with an interesting statistic.

When you add up all government spending in the United States – which includes federal, state, and local – total government spending is greater per household than the median household income.

I had never thought about this statistic before.  I had thought about total government spending in terms of each individual.  I had thought about federal spending per household.  But I had not considered total spending as compared to household income.

I did a quick search and found this article from last year citing this to be the case for 2009, 2010, and 2011.  It is hard to believe that this is not a bigger story, but it should be.

In 2011, total government spending was just over $6.1 trillion.  That included over $3.5 trillion in federal spending and over $2.5 trillion in state and local spending.  In 2011, there were just over 121 million households in the United States.  This put total government spending at $50,506, according to the article.  Meanwhile, the median household income was $50,054.

When that article was published in 2014, it used 2011 because that was the last full year with full data available.

You are probably wondering how this is even possible.  First, consider that this is not tax collections.  It is government spending, which means it includes the deficit spending.  At that time, the federal government was running one trillion dollar deficits.  It is more modest now at about half a trillion dollars.

But that is a mistake that I see with many analyses.  They only count tax collections.  But if the government is spending money using debt and/ or inflation, then it is consuming resources.  It is just a more indirect form of taxation.  So we should use government spending and not government tax collections to consider how much is being taken from us.

The second important thing to note is that we are using median household income.  This is different than the average.  When the median household income is $50,054, it means that half of households make more and half make less.  The average is higher because really high incomes of tens of millions of dollars are going to skew the average up.

Still, you know the system is majorly broken when the government at all levels is spending more per household than the median household income.  In the quote by Jimmy Fallon to start this piece, it paints a telling picture.  It was a far more libertarian comment than what he probably realized.

Imagine if you cut $5 trillion in total government spending.  In other words, you are left with just over $1 trillion for federal, state, and local spending.  Anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, panarchists, and other libertarians can argue about the rest on another day.

For the point of this article, let’s say that government at some level still spends money on roads, the court system, the police, a defensive military, and a few other things.  Now, I realize I am suggesting the total elimination of government funding for Social Security, pensions, Medicare, Medicaid, schools, welfare, and most of the alphabet agencies.

But imagine the average household keeping an extra $41,000 per year.  Even if your cut of this is just half, that would still be over $20,000 per year.  Giving up these big government programs all of a sudden doesn’t seem so bad.  What would your household do with an extra $20,000 or $40,000 per year?

We also have to realize that this would unleash the free market economy like nothing we’ve seen before.  It would mean almost instant higher wages.  It would mean lower prices for products and massive investment for new products.  Our living standards would rise quickly.

If you get into a discussion with somebody about taxes, point out this statistic.  How could anyone but a demagogue, or someone completely ignorant of what is going on, possibly think that we need higher taxes?  We don’t need fairer taxes, or a different tax structure, or a simpler tax code.  We simply need far lower taxes and far less government spending.

I know I could figure out what to do with an extra $40,000 per year in my pocket.

I just attended a liberty event (a couple of hours ago) that had Adam Kokesh as a guest speaker.  He is somewhat of a celebrity within the libertarian movement.

I have written on Adam Kokesh before.  He engages in acts of civil disobedience.  He stated to a judge that the only time he committed violence was during his time in Iraq.  He was in jail in solitary confinement, but he is now out on probation.

My only criticism of Kokesh is his underestimating the federal government in the past and risking his own freedom.  Kokesh is a very powerful speaker and advocate for liberty, and I don’t want to see him waste away in a prison because he is too valuable for the liberty movement.

His speech earlier this evening – while not necessarily child appropriate – was quite uplifting.  He talked about how he smiled at the prison guards during his time in there and the amusement he got from it.

But more importantly, he talked about optimism.  He said we are freer now than ever before.

In 2004, I attended a speech by the late great Harry Browne.  He said that he doubted that one in a thousand libertarians understood that human nature is on our side.

I think Harry Browne would be surprised today only because so many more libertarians are realizing that there is a lot of hope for the future.  I think a lot of libertarians still underestimate how far we’ve come and how far we can still go, but it is certainly more than one in a thousand who understand the great hope we have today.

When I was a libertarian in 2004, it was a rather lonely time, unless you were attending a specific event for libertarians or you were on a libertarian website.  That is still true to some extent today, but it is a lot easier to come across libertarians – particularly radical libertarians – today than ever before.

I am not saying that we will have some kind of a libertarian society in the near future.  I am not even saying that it is inevitable.  But, in general, despite the government atrocities we see every day, we are actually moving in the direction of liberty as more people become educated on the subject.

One other important thing that Kokesh said in his speech was that libertarians need to stop being angry (or sad or fearful).  They need to live freedom.  They need to enjoy the freedom they have and be happy.  This doesn’t mean burying your head in the sand.  It means celebrating freedom.  It means that when you talk to other people, you don’t need to debate them or get angry at them.  You can make your point and be happy and demonstrate your happiness.

I don’t typically advocate civil disobedience, unless it is carefully calculated.  But I understand that is the way some people operate.  I can’t argue with Rosa Parks for refusing to sit in the back of a bus, but she probably knew she wasn’t go to prison for it.

My only recommendation to libertarians is to be careful if you are going to purposely engage in civil disobedience to take a principled stand.  I am glad that Adam Kokesh is no longer in a prison cell.  He is doing far more good as a free man.

You can watch my favorite Adam Kokesh video below.

I hate to sound like a broken record on this subject (even though most of us don’t use records anymore), but the Chinese stock market is in a major bubble.

The real estate market has been in a massive bubble too, and for longer than I could have imagined.  For that reason, I am hesitant to call for an imminent downturn in Chinese stocks, especially since it is impossible to time these events anyway.  But I do foresee a major Chinese crash, whether it is in a week or a year from now.

I would be really shocked if these two bubbles both last for another two years or more.  The only way I could see this happening is if the Chinese central bank pumps even more money into the system at a greater pace than it already has.

The real estate market in China has seemed to cool a bit, but nothing close to a crash yet.  Meanwhile, the Chinese people have found themselves in the midst of a second bubble, whether they know it or not.

The Shanghai Composite Index just went over the 5,000 mark.  For some context, the 52-week low is barely over 2,000.  When a somewhat major stock market index goes up over 150% in less than a year, you know it is a bubble.  You know it is unsustainable.

This isn’t a post about shorting Chinese stocks, although that is certainly a possibility.  This is about the ramifications for the U.S. economy.

American consumers rely quite a bit on Chinese products, but there is more of a connection than this alone.  If there is a major recession in China, it would be hard to believe that this would not have some harmful effects on the U.S. economy.

The U.S. economy has its own misallocations.  U.S. stocks are likely in a bubble from the previous easy money policies of the Fed.  I don’t think real estate is in a nationwide bubble in the U.S., but certain areas such as Silicon Valley in California are likely in housing bubbles.

When Chinese stocks finally go into free fall, then don’t be surprised if U.S. stocks initially follow suit.  The bigger question mark is if U.S. stocks will just have a correction or a new bear market.

Watch China.  It is going to get interesting.

I am a strong advocate for having a permanent portfolio as part of your investment portfolio.  I recommend anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of your financial assets be put in a permanent portfolio setup.  This wouldn’t include any investment real estate.

The permanent portfolio was described by Harry Browne in his book Fail-Safe Investing.  You divide your portfolio up into 4 sections as follows:

• 25% stocks
• 25% long-term government bonds
• 25% cash or cash equivalents
• 25% gold

This portfolio is meant to weather any storm.  If there is an environment of high inflation, depression, or prosperity, then at least one category should pull up the rest.  Over time, you will find that it results in positive returns, especially with rebalancing.

The one environment where it tends not to do too well is when you have a recession or low growth, coupled with no or low price inflation.  In other words, the environment we have been in for the last 7 years is about the worst environment there is for the permanent portfolio, barring some major catastrophe.

While monetary inflation has been extremely high since 2008, price inflation has been low.  Gold has not done too well over the last few years and interest rates are extremely low.  You don’t get the dividends off of your cash and bond investments as you normally would.

This is why the permanent portfolio has been lackluster over the last several years.  It was great to have during the fall of 2008.  Although it went down briefly, it was far better than owning stocks, at least up until spring of 2009.

An alternative to the permanent portfolio setup is buying the Permanent Portfolio mutual fund.  The symbol is PRPFX.  I prefer the actual permanent portfolio, but PRPFX is easier to accomplish quickly.  And for people with 401k plans, sometimes it is a possibility.

I say that I recommend anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of your financial assets be put in some kind of permanent portfolio setup.  That is a big range.  Part of it depends on your appetite for risk.  If you are really risk averse, at least with your investments, then you should be closer to 100%.

Right now, I actually recommend that you be well above the 50% level.  The reason is that no investments look really appetizing right now.  If you know of a great stock that you think is going higher, or if you live in a town with cheap real estate that you think is going higher, then go for it.  But personally, I just don’t see a lot of opportunities right now in the things that I know well.

I think gold is going to see another bull run at some time, and I think that gold stocks are going to go up in a big way.  That is why I own some gold stocks now, in case things happen sooner than I expect.

But even with gold and gold stocks, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another downturn before things turn around.  If we hit another recession, then everything may take a temporary hit.

One mistake that many investors make is that they feel they always need to be in the game.  They feel they always need to be invested in something big.  But sometimes patience pays off, and I think patience is important right now.

There is nothing wrong with having most of your assets in a permanent portfolio, making minimal returns above the price inflation rate.

When a big event happens, you can get more aggressive.  It is better to wait for an opportunity that is more obvious.

For example, if the economy starts in a downturn and the Fed starts talking about another round of quantitative easing (monetary inflation), then I will probably start getting more into speculating in gold and gold stocks, outside of the permanent portfolio.  This is just one example.

Do not expect things to keep on going as they are.  The Fed has built up a lot of malinvestment.  Either the economy is going to get really rocky at some point, or the Fed is going to have to up the ante with more inflation.  It won’t be the status quo forever.

In the meantime, don’t be afraid to sit back and bide your time.  Opportunities will arise.  For now, I recommend that most of your assets be kept safe – or at least as safe a way that I know of – in a permanent portfolio.

A key section of the so-called Patriot Act has expired that was previously used as the basis for NSA spying.  I read the many headlines saying that you can now email, text, etc. without fear of the U.S. government spying on you.

But has the NSA really stopped spying?

Virtually everything the NSA does is unconstitutional, so in regards to the law, it doesn’t really mean much.  Is anyone really so naive as to think that the NSA workers just went to work on Monday morning and found something else to do with their time?  They shut down the computers and databases used to collect information and went on to something else?

The whole reason that Edward Snowden is living in Russia is because he blew the whistle on the NSA.  He proved to the world that the NSA was spying on almost anyone it wanted to, including Americans.  He proved that the NSA was not in the business of just catching terrorists, but in the business of mass data collection.

The NSA spies.  That is its purpose.  It is for more power and control for the state against the general population.

The law means nothing to the people at the NSA.  If it did, it never would have started spying in the first place.  It was already illegal, with or without the Patriot Act.  It will just use other provisions of the Patriot Act to justify its actions, if it even needs to justify its actions.  If the whole Patriot Act is repealed, it will find some other justification if needed.

The only way to stop NSA spying is by defunding the agency.  When the NSA workers stop getting their direct deposits, then they will not want to show up for work any longer.  They might have to find an honest job.  The funding has to stop for any guarantee that the spying will stop.

It is good that this latest story happened because it brought more awareness to the American people.  But it is highly doubtful that it has stopped, or even slowed down, the NSA spying.

As libertarians, we often hear about the erosion of liberty in the U.S. and the growth of big government.  However, this is not true across the board, and we should recognize the areas where we have gained liberty.

Technology is certainly helping in advancing liberty.  While technology can be used against us (think of the NSA) by the government, I believe there is a net benefit towards liberty overall.

Uber is threatening the taxi cab monopolies throughout the U.S. and elsewhere.  Email and other online communications are making the U.S. Post Office more obsolete by the day.  The easy and cheap access to information is destroying what is known as the mainstream media.

Another area in which we have gained liberty, but which has little to do with technology, is in the area of homeschooling.  While its legality was questioned up until around the 1980s, it is essentially legal everywhere in the U.S. today.

To be sure, the state laws vary, and some are better than others.  Some states enforce strict standards for homeschoolers while others have minimal requirements.

This is a great symbolism of liberty.  It means that you have the right to teach your kids how you want to teach them, and you have the choice not to hand them over to the state.

It is difficult to get accurate statistics on homeschooling in the U.S., but it is estimated that close to 2 million students are homeschooled now.  This would be just over 3% of the U.S. student population, which is quite significant considering it was barely legal just a few decades ago.

Homeschooling is like the internet.  Some people say that the government will make it illegal, but I say that the cat is already out of the bag.  Homeschooling parents are very passionate about what they do and their right to do it.  They tend to have a strong voice.

When a German family sought asylum in the U.S. for homeschooling their children, the homeschoolers in America got behind them.  The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has become something of a force to be reckoned with.  It will get behind cases that threaten parents’ rights to homeschool.

I recently attended a homeschool graduation (for any kids in the state) and a homeschool convention.  You will find a lot of smart kids and a lot of diversity in terms of interests and aspirations.

There are many who still criticize or question homeschooling.  Some are just apologists for the state.  They think that the government should have priority over parents in raising children.

Others are just not familiar with homeschooling and question whether kids will get proper socialization.

In response to socialization, my first comment is that anyone who thinks this way should walk through a public (government) middle school in America and point out all of the kids who would be a good influence for others.  I’m not saying that there aren’t any, but I’m guessing most would not exactly be role models at that age.

Also, most kids have activities in sports, music, clubs, etc.  There is nothing preventing homeschooled kids from doing these things.  With the popularity of homeschooling rising, it is becoming more common to have homeschool groups, co-ops, etc.

Homeschooling is not legal everything.  It is illegal in Germany and Sweden for example.  The general populations there obviously believe that children are owned by the state.  I am glad I do not live in those places.

While liberty in the U.S. has been lost in some areas, schooling is not one of them.  With more online curriculums coming, homeschooling will only get more popular.  It is not just hardcore Christians homeschooling anymore.  It is becoming more widespread and more acceptable.  Libertarians should be thankful for this and recognize it as a gain.

I am a big fan of Ron Paul and have great appreciation for what he has done over the last several decades.  I don’t think highly of many politicians, and Ron Paul is often the one exception.

I generally believe that libertarians should stay away from politics.  You really aren’t going to change things politically by being politically involved.  The power runs too deep.  The only way to change things politically is by shifting public opinion.

The only reason Ron Paul was a success was because he used his platform as a congressman to spread his message.  He used it as an educational tool.  Even in his presidential runs, particularly the last two, he used these as a platform to tell people about his libertarian message.  He had little hope of actually winning in the primary.

If you are a libertarian going into politics, I hope it is for the purpose of spreading the message of liberty.  If it is to seek political change through your office, you will be really disappointed, or else really corrupted.

Ron Paul’s son, Rand Paul, is more of a politician.  I don’t know what his full intentions are at this point, but he is trying to play the political game.  He is certainly more knowledgable about the subject of liberty than the other 99 senators or any of the other major presidential candidates.

But this, in a way, just makes it that much more disappointing.  I think of Alan Greenspan who actually understands economics and central banking.  He sold out to the establishment as Fed chair.  I think of Colin Powell who sat there and lied in front of the U.N. about weapons of mass destruction.  He sold out in a major way.  In a sense, I am more mad at Colin Powell about the Iraq war than I am at Bush.

Rand Paul understands liberty, yet he is selling out.  Sure, he has done some positive things, including his latest stunt of opposing the NSA’s bulk collection of data.

However, he also stated recently that Edward Snowden should be in a jail cell.  Paul said, “Snowden and (James) Clapper should be in the same cell, talking about liberty and security.”

If Rand Paul truly believes that Snowden should be in jail for what he did, then Rand Paul is no friend to liberty.  If he is pandering to his audience, then he is dishonest and can’t be trusted.

I don’t know of anybody who has gotten into office and acted more libertarian than what they stated in their campaign.  It is usually the opposite.  Most candidates will talk a game about liberty and then be a proponent for big government policies as soon as in office.  George W. Bush campaigned on fiscal conservatism and a humble foreign policy in 2000, and we all know how that turned out for 8 years.

If you think Rand Paul will bring us in the right direction as president, you will be really disappointed.  He will be more in bed with the establishment if he actually gets the nomination, let alone the presidency.

I consider the issue of the Snowden leaks as something of a litmus test.  If someone thinks he should go to jail, then that person is generally anti-liberty.

I could ask someone two questions and get a pretty good idea of where they stand politically.  Should Edward Snowden go to jail for his actions?  Should the government get more involved in healthcare?

If you answer “no” to both, then you are libertarian or libertarian leaning.  A conservative will typically answer “yes” to the first one and “no” to the second.  A modern-day liberal will typically answer “no” to the first (but not always) and “yes” to the second.

An authoritarian will answer “yes” to both.

So Rand Paul is supposedly against the NSA spying, yet he thinks Snowden should go to jail for exposing the NSA’s criminality.  Does this make any sense?  Were there Germans in the 1940s who opposed the concentration camps but thought it was treasonous if anyone tried to expose what was happening?

If you are a libertarian, don’t waste your time on politics.  And don’t waste any time or money supporting Rand Paul.  He is not his father.

If Rand Paul were smart and actually wanted to play politics, he would be speaking a more libertarian message than what he is.  He is trying to play both sides, pleasing a libertarian element and pleasing the establishment.  Instead, he is displeasing both.

Right now, it seems that Republican candidates are entering the race by the boatload.  I can’t even keep up.  The only way Rand Paul can win is by differentiating himself.  This would mean giving a libertarian message.  Instead he is giving a lot of mixed messages.  If someone wants an establishment candidate, they can go to Jeb Bush or Scott Walker.

I originally thought about a year ago that Rand Paul might have a shot at the nomination.  I no longer think it is likely.  He is trying to play a political game and he is doing so horribly.  Don’t waste your time with Rand Paul.  He won’t win.  Even if he could win, you probably don’t want him there.  People would just blame all of the problems on his “libertarian politics”, even though his policies wouldn’t be libertarian at all.

I hope Rand Paul’s candidacy falls flat on its face.  I also hope the Libertarian Party puts up a real libertarian next year so that people will have some kind of a choice in the general election, if they want to vote at all.