We started feeding hay for the winter. I always listen to NPR because I surf over when there is a commercial on KWMT (all Iowa country). Everyday I hear some hilarious comment that I’d be selfish not to share.

Today’s comment is: “This nation’s fascination with guns has always been about race.”

Inflation is in the news, at least for those who have not entirely given up on their ability to link current affairs to their own lives. In my visits with friends and acquaintances, I’ve found that a huge percentage of them have decided that “the news” is biased or that things are out of our hands. They try not to pay attention in order to be happy. I often wonder about my own addiction to information from that public world. Where is the joy in Thomas Jefferson’s “informed electorate?”

The most relevant issue to our individual situations, one that admittedly is beyond our control, is rising prices.

Inflation is a product of a private bank (The Federal Reserve) acting at the behest of the only real monopoly in the United States, the U.S. government. Defining inflation as rising prices is deceptive. Inflation is the declining value of currency. Our money is being destroyed by government spending of “borrowed” dollars printed out of nothing (inflated money supply).

Farmers: Imagine if USDA reported the existence of an extra billion bushels of corn all of a sudden. What would the corn price do? That is, how many dollars would buy a bushel of corn compared to the days before the report?

It is a symptom of a conspiracy (keep reading even if this word causes a tantrum) by government officials to create an illusion of prosperity even though consumers are experiencing a decline in purchasing power. Their wages decidedly don’t buy as much as they used to.

Reports of record highs in stock markets, while appearing to indicate a roaring economy, actually indicate that it takes more dollars to by stocks, not increased value.

Retirees are hurt by this prosperity charade. Their big plans to retire at some point have proven to be a mistake because prices have gone up relative to their savings. Oops! It’s because their saved dollars shrunk in order to prop up politicians’ grand plans that didn’t work, because planned economies don’t work.

Only free economies are sustainable because billions of decisions by self interested people will always trump politicians’ plans influenced by lobbyists. Pleasing donors is paid for by the low and middle classes in the long run, the same as corporate taxes. The politicians and corporations simply pass on the expense while taking credit for what the theft has purchased.

Democrats and Republicans, right wingers and left, all deny that inflation is caused by this creation of cash because it is this stealth tax that funds their popularity. Productive and ambitious people, the ones who make this a land of plenty, are starting to dial back business startups and expansions because their additional income will be taken by politicians to appease donors, whether in “defense” spending, or domestic boondoggles.

We see rising prices and buy things ahead to avoid the added costs. Then, with our full pantries we wonder why retail sales are down. This is the boom and bust cycle caused by central planning Ron Paul warned us about. The transfer of wealth upward was in danger so the corporate media called him a racist and an isolationist. A slur is easier to think about than monetary policy.

Politicians now blame “big grocery” or “big oil” for increased costs for working people. But it is the only monopoly, government, that is to blame.

Dear Editor,

It is interesting how David Kruse talks about inflation (Going down the rabbit hole on inflation, Dec.24). He seems to think it is like the weather, something that just happens.

Inflation is a product of a private bank (The Federal Reserve) acting at the behest of the only real monopoly in the United States, the U.S. government. Defining inflation as rising prices is deceiving. Inflation is the declining value of currency. The currency representing your money is being destroyed by government spending of “borrowed” dollars printed out of nothing (Inflated money supply). Farmers: Imagine if USDA reported the existence of an extra billion bushels of corn all of a sudden. What would the corn price do?

It is a symptom of a conspiracy (keep reading even if this word causes a tantrum) by government officials to create an illusion of prosperity even though consumers are experiencing a decline in purchasing power. Their wages decidedly don’t buy as much as they used to.

Reports of record highs in stock markets, while appearing to indicate a roaring economy, actually indicate that it takes more dollars to by stocks, not increased value.

Retirees in particular, are hurt by this prosperity charade. Their big plans to retire at some point have proven to be a mistake because prices have gone up relative to their savings. Oops! It’s because their saved dollars shrunk in order to prop-up politicians’ grand plans that didn’t work, because planned economies don’t work.

Only free economies are sustainable because billions of decisions by self interested people will always trump politicians’ plans influenced by lobbyists. Pleasing donors is paid for by working folk in the long run.

Democrats and Republicans, right wingers and left, all deny that inflation is caused by this infusion of cash because it is the stealth tax that funds their popularity. Productive and ambitious people, the ones who make this a land of plenty, are starting to dial back business start-ups and expansions because the additional income will be taken by politicians to appease donors, whether in “defense” spending, or domestic boondoggles.

Politicians now blame “big grocery” or “big oil” for increased costs for working people. But it is the only monopoly, government, that is to blame.

Fritz Groszkruger

From All Quiet On the Western Front (1930)

I drove up to Byron, Minnesota a while back to buy some steel wheels for the Jetta. I had had enough of the slow leaks around the alloy wheel rims. By the way, 50 mpg on diesel, which emits less CO2 than gas, is greener than the autocrats in Washington dictate and ride around in.

From Byron, I drove into Rochester for my first lunch at a Chick-fil-A. It was okay for fast food. On the way into town I drove past a giant solar panel array on some rolling hills. It was pretty neat looking from a distance.

But anyone who enjoyed biology class as much as I did would look underneath. Plastic from China just doesn’t appeal to me. Under those panels was a world of interrelated plant and animal life that took 450 million years to evolve. The source of that life has been the sun all those years and it is a microcosm of what sustains life on earth. Now it will be starved.

There is a solar “farm” (as if a prison is a resort!) south of Hampton on soil so exclusively productive that it couldn’t be outclassed by 99% of the earth’s farmland.

On the other hand, the President has just approved 5,000 acres of solar installations in a California desert on public land that will power 275,000 homes. That makes a whole lot more sense than solar panels in the upper Midwest. The ultimate test though, would be if the owners of that land (and the tortoises) made that decision for themselves. The way it is, politicians made that decision for us and we haven’t consented.

One of the big issues with “sustainable” energy is its intermittent nature. Research on improved batteries is being federally subsidized and that means it will be directed by cronyism instead of market driven scientific vetting. Interestingly, I found that by far the most popular form of energy storage is by pumped hydro. So all these romantic sounding technologies like hydrogen and lithium batteries are dwarfed by simple water pumps and reservoirs.

The real king of solar energy storage is fossil fuels. Plants were nourished by the sun and compressed, like the wood pellets in a pellet smoker, but much more high tech. We can try but God knows more about creating than we do.

Let’s get on to human-caused climate change, the impetus for the tapping of taxpayers by green energy entrepreneurs. It seems like our national effort is at the same level as all our most recent wars. Our efforts have illustrated a lack of faith in the seriousness of the threats.

If we truly wish to accomplish the stated goal of a stable climate, I’ve listed some essential actions:

• Conquer China and India because their greenhouse gas emissions make any reduction here moot. Enforcing these invasions might look difficult but if the situation is so dire, isn’t any expense worth it?
• Ban all tillage. As a farmer, this issue is personal. Any time soil is tilled, tons of CO2 are released to the atmosphere. And millions of years building the soil is neutralized.
• Subsidize pedal powered computers.
• Birth control.

Before seeing these actions as ridiculous, consider that the world is bigger than Hampton. Consider that time is longer than our lifetimes. Consider that taxes paid by corporations are paid with your money. Expenses will be paid by ordinary people living ordinary lives, not billionaires sacrificing ski trips and yachts.

Adaptation to changing weather is practical. Changing the weather is impossible.