Guest Posts

The Dissident Dad – Raising Independent Minded Children in America is Tough

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No joke, trying to raise an independent-minded, decent human being in America is like trying to fly through a Category 5 hurricane.

For starters, nothing beats some of the toys offered up to kids. For example, you can hone your child’s remote killing skills by buying him or her a military drone toy. Not only can you kill women and children in their homes, but you can do so without actually having to deploy overseas!

Teach your kids this valuable skill via the, Maisto Fresh Metal Tailwinds 1:97 Scale Die Cast United States Military Aircraft – US Air Force Medium Altitude, Long Endurance, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) RQ-1 Predator with Display Stand, available at Amazon:

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The Dissident Dad – Free Your Mind

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I was wiping off the dust from an old book that I read when I was just 15 years old. I thought I had lost it, but while cleaning out my garage, I discovered it at the bottom of a box, like buried treasure. This specific book changed my life. It was the key to everything my brain had told me was right, but I had never seen it in written words. The book was “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” by Robert Kiyosaki. First self-published in 1997, somehow I got lucky and a friend who was in his 30s gave it to me as a gift.

Upon opening up this book that I hadn’t touched in 18 years, written in my handwriting was “free your mind.” It was a statement of faith I had declared to myself as a young man.

Since last fall, I’ve been writing Dissident Dad posts weekly, focusing on my personal struggle to raise 3 children in an environment where the America we were all told about and learned to love is completely in the past. It’s a totally foreign nation to anyone residing in the current police state run by an insane group of oligarchs, multinational corporations and lunatics in D.C.

Today, I want to change it up a bit and reach out to any young adults reading this post, or perhaps parents who are raising teenagers. With daily stories about college-aged kids being overwhelmed with debt and irrelevant degrees for today’s economy, I wanted to put together a list of 50 alternatives to going to college.

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The Dissident Dad – What One Son of Liberty Can Do, So Can Another

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Screen Shot 2015-02-03 at 2.22.33 PM“Every heart beats true ‘neath the Red, White and Blue, where there’s never a boast or brag. But should old acquaintance be forgot, keep your eye on the grand old flag.”

I remember proudly singing this as a child at school, pounding my heart with a closed right fist as we sang that verse. I remember learning about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and about the Sons of Liberty. British colonists who were mad as hell about a distant central government taxing their income between 1% and 2%, plus additional taxes on sugar trade and tea.

These Americans wanted liberty. They wanted self-governance.

Not without their flaws, like all of us. They still had slavery, but certainly, during a period of history where everyone was merely a subject to the king, these guys were taking a giant step in the right direction. Unfortunately, that America, the one we are sold on and sing to as school children, is dead.

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A Father Talks with His Son About Eric Garner

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Screen Shot 2014-12-11 at 12.46.46 PMI hate that I have to teach my children to be vigilant when it comes to the police. My overall message is that they should be respectful, but to never trust them.

Imagine a group of people surrounding someone who isn’t doing anything violent or disruptive. All this person wants is to be left alone and mind his own business. The gang surrounding him, instead of minding its own business, jumps on him, chokes him, and then proceeds to smother him against the concrete until he dies. If you haven’t already figured it out, this really did happen. To Eric Garner. On July 17th, 2014 he was choked to death while attempting to have a conversation with the police.

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My First Interaction with Texas Police

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Screen Shot 2014-10-08 at 12.46.10 PMMy children’s first interaction with the police was witnessing two officers get verbally upset at my refusal to provide them with my name while standing on my own property. Overall, it was a tough day for the kids.

The story begins innocuously enough. We rented a bounce house to have some fun, but the winds were too strong that day and the bounce house started floating away until it was ultimately stopped by our fence. When I called to get a refund, the company who rented it to us was not only unwilling to help out, but arrived upset that the bounce house had been ripped on my fence. Wanting to make a record of it, they called the local police.

Upon the arrival of the first county Sheriff, he kindly asked me what had happened. I told him that it blew away and that it was ridiculous that the police would even respond to such a situation. He agreed, but said that the bounce house company was alleging that I ripped it because I couldn’t get a refund. At that point, I told the officer this is a civil matter and I don’t want you or anyone else on my property. The officer complied and then asked for my name, my response was “no thanks.”

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Inaugural Post from “The Dissident Dad” – Explaining Ferguson, Missouri to Your Children

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Screen Shot 2014-09-18 at 12.14.01 PMI’ve had the great pleasure to get to know Dan Ameduri, founder of Future Money Trends, over the past several years. While the two of us originally got to know one another through the world of precious metals investing, what I have valued and appreciated most about him is his intellectual flexibility to remain open to new ideas and possibilities for the future.

Many of the topics I discuss on the site take on a particular importance if you have a family. Since I do not yet have children, I thought it would be wise to reach out to Dan Ameduri, a dedicated father, in order to get his unique perspective on important cultural and economic issues. Fortunately for me, he agreed to be a part of Liberty Blitzkrieg’s new Contributors section.

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Introducing Liberty Blitzkrieg Contributors

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Liberty Blitzkrieg was launched two and a half years ago on April 19th, 2012, the day after the 237th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and if not for the tremendous support of my faithful readers, would not have been possible. The interest my work has generated, the thoughtful email messages of encouragement, the passionate comments, and of course the generous and entirely voluntary Bitcoin donations has touched me and inspired me to improve my writing and content generation every single day.

When I first started out, I figured maybe a few hundred people would come and visit per day. As 2014 comes to a close, those expectations have been exceeded greatly, with Liberty Blitzkrieg averaging 65,000 unique visitors and 123,000 page views per month so far this year. What can I say except: Thank You!

My philosophy on writing has always been, and continues to be, that I’d prefer to write one or two powerful and incisive posts per day, rather than five or six watered down articles. As such, I feel my current capacity for daily content is more or less maxed out. This leaves me with a great deal of topics left unaddressed, partly due to personal time constraints, but also because I lack the expertise and interest to cover certain subjects. Enter Contributors.

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Guest Post: Why Policy Has Failed

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The essay below is courtesy of Doug Rudisch, a friend and former fund manager, who I have known and respected since my days on Wall Street.  I am extremely grateful that he took the time and effort to so insightfully write on some of the greatest issues facing our nation today and to provide this content to my readers.  What follows below are some of the most powerful passages from his piece and the entire thing is embedded at the end. The whole thing is simply excellent.

What I can say with absolute certainty is that I have lost a lot of faith and trust in the system. And I am not the only one. This sentiment is running at all-time highs amongst business leaders (their collective in-actions prove it) and guys on the street. It is both sides of the barbell and middle that are upset. Often it’s one or the other, but not all three. This time it’s not at an external state, it’s directed inwards. That is a tough problem to solve. Jingoism is not the answer either as we already tried that.

If there is no faith in the system, it has a really hard time working. And I mean real underlying faith and trust in the system, as opposed to the confidence born from economic steroid injections or entitlements. These are valid notions, but as a point of clarity I am talking about a something different. There also is a subtle but important distinction between faith and trust versus confidence. Faith and trust are longer term and more powerful concepts.

There is more going on than a temporary lull in animal spirits that current fiscal and monetary policy will cure. If that was the case, it would be working already.

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However as the above chart shows, things clearly changed in the 2003 and 2009 profit cycles as corporate profits surged while employment did not. My explanations:

Starting with the 2009 cycle first. In the 2008 downturn companies eliminated a lot of jobs. The depth of the downturn forced them to make the tough decision. Normally that kills consumer spend due to wage loss. But the government plugged the revenue gap with transfer payments and direct investment. See the green line go nearly vertical and it is fascinating how profit growth has mirrored the trajectory of debt growth. The consumer has started to dis-save again as well. Thus corporations kept the revenue, lost the labor, and voila record margins. You could argue unemployment is being subsidized. Like anything else, when something is subsidized, you tend to get a lot of it.

For example, see the recent new investor activity in single family homes and farmland of all things, including equity hedge funds who apparently think homes are like stocks. Maybe it’s a sign that other asset categories (equities and credit) are getting toppy or inflation expectations are increasing when hedge funds begin to foray into the single family housing market and farmland (some having little or no prior experience in these markets). At any rate, it seems odd and not good to me when policy results in hedge funds buying single family homes and farms.

Sorry Mr. Greenspan we have seen where valuing assets solely on the basis of current rates got us. If we should do that, baseball cards and chewing gum would also be great investments today. My suspicion is from here baseball cards and chewing gum will hold their value over time better than the typical company trading at 15x earnings derived from profit margins that are twice its average levels. And in point of fact according to the CPI the price of candy and chewing gum increased 31% between the years 2000-2012, while the S&P index including this year’s rip is only up 6% since 2000. Yes it matters what the price is that one pays for an asset!

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