Andrei Illarionov resigned just in time. As an admirer of the capitalist philosophy of Ayn Rand and the laissez faire economics of Ludwig Von Mises, his resignation this week as Vladimir Putin’s chief economic advisor is a disaster for Russia.

But his announcing that “Russia is no longer a democracy,” serves to keep intact the record of there never being a war between two democracies should war break out between Russia and Ukraine.

For the day of Illarionov’s resignation (Tuesday, December 27), the Russian Defense Minister threatened to invade Ukraine.

Russia risks a wave of capital flight and a shattering economic crisis as the West prepares a package of sanctions over the seizure of Crimea.

Chancellor Angela Merkel spelled out the danger for Russia in a speech to the German Parliament yesterday (3/13) that silenced pro-Kremlin voices in her own coalition and left no doubt that Europe is now fully behind the US on punitive measures.

"If Russia continues on its course of the past weeks, that will not only be a great catastrophe for Ukraine. It will cause massive damage to Russia, both economically and politically," she said. "None of us wants it to come to this, but we are determined to act. Let me be absolutely clear; the territorial integrity of Ukraine is not up for discussion."

The West has threatened visa bans and an asset freeze on individuals as early as next Monday (3/17) unless Russia steps back from the brink on the annexation of Crimea. And that is only the begining.

Russia has threatened to retaliate with "symmetrical sanctions" but Tim Ash, from Standard Bank, said it is a one-sided contest that Moscow cannot win.  Here's why.

Last week was Europe. This week it’s Asia. I’ve been giving speeches and meeting with folks in Hong Kong, Singapore, and now here in Taiwan about how to democratize China.

The text of one of these speeches, delivered at Chung Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, is a companion article following this, entitled, Freedom and Peace in China.

The meetings with democracy activists discussed the extraordinary urgency in transforming dictatorship in China to democracy within the next 15 to 18 months. For that may be all the time Taiwan has before China attacks, and the US is drawn into a full scale war that could go all-out nuclear.

The Beijing Olympics are to be held in the summer of 2008. That’s 32 months from now. For all the saber-rattling China has indulged in over Taiwan, most Taiwanese figure they’ve got until after 2008 before the Chicoms will consider a military assault upon them. It really startles them to hear they may have only months and not years to go.

China's Xi Jinping has cast the die. After weighing up the unappetizing choice before him for a year, he has picked the lesser of two poisons.

The balance of evidence is that most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Tse-tung aims to prick China's $24 trillion credit bubble early in his 10-year term, rather than putting off the day of reckoning for yet another cycle.

This may be well-advised for China, but the rest of the world seems remarkably nonchalant over the implications. Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and the commodity bloc are already in the cross-hairs.

"China is getting serious about deleveraging," says Patrick Legland and Wei Yao from Societe Generale. "It is difficult to gently deflate a bubble. There is a very real possibility that this slow deflation may get out of control and lead to a hard landing."

Societe Generale has defined its hard landing as a fall in Chinese growth to a trough of 2%, with two quarters of contraction. This would cause a 30% slide in Chinese equities, a 50% crash in copper prices, and a drop in Brent crude to $75.

Is everybody blind?" "What in the world has happened to us?"

Two bulls-eye questions asked by ordinary Americans that we all should be asking each other. 

The first was asked by Marine Colonel Peter Martino last week (8/12) in a Concord NH city council hearing regarding its police department's proposed acquisition (with Homeland Security money) of a "counter attack vehicle" to protect Concord from "domestic terrorist threats" such as the liberty advocates of the Free State Project.
 
Thanks to Col. Martino, and the video of his testimony's going viral, people may start catching on that their local police department is being converted into Obama's Storm Troopers, militarily armed to crush any attempt to rebel against his 1984 fascism.

The highest priority of conservatives on a local basis should be to demand the defunding of their community's police militarization. Almost every city above 25,000 population in America has its own militarized SWAT Team.  Does yours?

Regarding the second question, since you're not a hermit in a Himalayan cave, you watch Duck Dynasty that keeps setting records for the most-watched show on cable-tv.  The show has become a cultural phenomenon as the Robertson family is hilariously but clean-decent funny, pro-family, pro-life, unapologetically Christian, self-made wealthy and unapologetically capitalist, and loves guns and hunting. 

The show is incredibly popular and is the antithesis of all liberal values.  This was made sparkling clear with a video of a speech given by Phil Robertson, the family patriarch, that has gone wildly viral this week.  This quote is why:

Do you think you receive fair value for the money you spend on taxes? The fact is you don't, because there is excessive corruption in both the way your tax money is collected and in the way it is spent. Many countries are notorious for the tax collectors being "on the take." At the federal level, it is rare for an Internal Revenue Service agent to put his hand out, but that does not rule out considerable corruption.

The corruption starts with Congress. Members of Congress "buy votes" by handing out "free stuff." It includes expenditures on programs that few, if any, congressmen would spend their own money on, plus programs that are filled with waste and fraud that go on year after year (e.g., studies have shown that Medicare and Medicaid misspend up to a third of their budgets).

Members of Congress also buy campaign contributions by proposing and voting for expenditures that reward certain companies, industries, and unions Solyndra and the General Motors bailout come to mind. This kind of buying of votes and campaign contributions goes on in most democracies. The United States may be the world's leader in vote and contribution buying through special provisions in the tax code.

It is not hard to figure out why the members of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, the two tax-writing committees, tend to receive much larger campaign contributions than others who sit on less influential committees.