The Morning Roar: Krugman to Earn $25,000/Month with "Income Inequality Institute", Victory for Student Charged with Recording Bullies, Protestors Shred Gun Registration Forms
Welcome to your Thursday edition of The Morning Roar! Paul Krugman to Earn $25,000 Per Month with "Income Inequality Institute" Our old pal the Krugster is at it again! This week the salary Paul Krugman will be receiving in compensation for his forthcoming role with City University of New York (CUNY)'s Luxembourg Income Study Center - a research branch which focuses on the study of income inequality - was revealed when his formal offer letter was obtained thanks to New York's Freedom of Information Law. Krugman will receive $225,000 over two semesters - about 9 months - for his efforts.Just what will those efforts be exactly? The letter describes the role of a typical "distinguished professor" , which will be Krugman's title:
The typical load of a distinguished professor is one weekly graduate seminar each term, in addition to the supervision of graduate students .
Sounds like this would at least be a fairly busy task, crafting a weekly seminar and directly working with graduate students in their course of study. However, Paul Krugman is no typical Distinguished Professor! Robinson Chase of CUNY describes in the letter the special role he envisions for Krugman.
Year 1: No teaching or supervision; instead you would be asked to contribute to our buildup of LIS and the inequality initiative, and to playing some kind of modest (not onerous!) role in our public events.
We certainly wouldn't want him doing anything onerous for $25,000 per month! After the first year, Krugman will indeed have to conduct a seminar:
Year 2 and thereafter: one seminar per year, the balance of your workload being made up of contributions as described above.
One Seminar. Per Year. Along with undefined "contributions." Sounds like a nice gig!I certainly wouldn't fault Paul Krugman - he who is always harping on about "income inequality" and the benefits of state intervention to quell it - for capitalizing on his talents in that area and working to promote the causes which, however misguided they may be, he seems to firmly believe in. Of course, CUNY is part of the vast conglomeration of American institutions of higher learning which receive government money both directly (from the State of New York in the case of CUNY) and indirectly through the "guaranteed loans" the government doles out so frequently.The irony is so obvious that I won't bore you by spelling it all out. But some of it may be lost on Krugman himself, who seemingly doesn't make the connection between the government interventions for which he advocates and the "income inequality" of which he often derides. Krugman advocates a system that would best be labelled fascism - a system in which a free market is allowed on the surface, while the government writes laws and regulations which tend to favor big businesses and politically-connected, crony corporations.Fascist or crony capitalist systems Krugman advocates for (of course he would never use those terms) and which we generally have here in the United States are what result in true "income inequality." Those corporations who are the first to receive government money - made readily available by the Federal Reserve System - have the economy skewed largely in their favor. In a more free economy, individuals would have much greater freedom to create their own income, build businesses, and save money. The government interventions which Krugman often calls for only hinder the natural process of man's freedom to trade with one another and the wealth which results.Check out these relevant episodes of the Lions of Liberty Podcast! Student Charged For Recording Bullies Will No Longer Have Case Pursued by District AttorneyIn a brief follow-up to a story we discussed in this past Monday's Morning Roar, the case of disabled student named Christian Stanfield who was charged - and found guilty - of "disorderly conduct" for recording an episode of bullying on his school-provided iPad has taken a positive turn.The bullying had been going on for some time so Stanfield decided to record the incident in order to show his mother. Par for the course, instead of the bullies being disciplined, it was Stanfield who was charged with a crime.Now our friend Ben Swann is reporting over at BenSwann.com that the District Attorney will no longer be pursuing the case against Stanfield, who has filed an appeal. This essentially means that Stanfield should have the ruling overturned without issue (in theory!)So how did things turn around so fast for young Mr. Stanfield? Ben Swann describes how his site's coverage of the story, first broken by BenSwann.com reporter Priscilla Jones, combined with a strong social media reaction helped to garner attention on the case:
Since our stories on this issue first broke, the response has been huge. The high school’s principal has deleted his twitter profile, at a recent school board meeting parents turned out to defend Christian, and now national and international media are finally covering the story including Fox News, RT America, and the Daily Mail UK.
This is the power of the new media. No longer do we have to sit around and hope that Big Cable (Fox, CNN, MSNBC,etc) will report on a story. More and more independent outfits like BenSwann.com and our good friend Brian Engelman's project The New American Media are popping up and pushing the stories out there that won't be discussed in the mainstream. Combine that with a rabid libertarian presence on social media that hungers for justice, these stories can often take on a life of there own before your school principal can hit "Delete" on his Twitter account.Check out my interview with Ben Swann from the Lions of Liberty Podcast!Buffalo, NY Protestors Shred Gun Registration Forms in Defiance of SAFE ActAs our own John Odermatt discussed in Tuesday's Morning Roar, it is estimated that up to 90% of NY gun owners have refused to comply with the SAFE Act, which requires the registration of all guns that fit into the state's flimsy-flamsy definition of an "assault weapon." Refusing to register one's gun is certainly an act of disobedience, but it's largely an anonymous one.However, protests against the SAFE Act are not confined to passive failures to comply with the draconian gun law.In my ORIGINAL hometown of Buffalo, NY - where I was born and lived in just long enough to be cursed with a lifelong attachment to the Buffalo Bills - a group of protestors took their frustration out on the registration forms themselves, shredding them in front of a state office building. The Buffalo News has reports on some of the comments from protestors at the rally:
“They have been shredding the Constitution for years,” said Rus Thompson, who led Tuesday’s rally. “You shred the Constitution, we’ll shred any form you want us to fill out. They can’t arrest a million people. What are they going to do?”“Nobody is going to comply with this,” added Tim Swedenhjelm, a gun owner and a 30-year range safety officer from Springville. “We don’t call them ‘assault rifles’ because they’re not ‘assault rifles.’ Assault rifles are automatic weapons. These are not automatic weapons. When I hear politicians call them assault rifles, you know they don’t know what they’re talking about.”Chants at the rally included “We will not comply” and “Cuomo’s got to go.” Some of the signs included: “Millions of Gun Owners Hurt No One Yesterday” and “You Won’t Get Gun Control By Disarming Law Abiding Citizens.”
So much for anonymity, Rus and Tim!It's safe to say that the men named in this article are likely non-compliers with the SAFE Act, and they've made the decision to put their names an faces out there in opposition to it. Failure to comply with the act and register these guns can come with serious consequences, including up to four years in jail for knowingly possessing an unregistered gun.Civil disobedience is a tricky matter. It can often end badly for the disobedient with little to no gain, as in the case of Adam Kokesh where he ended up in jail for weeks on end and having nearly all of his money taken from him by some of his "supporters." Then again, there does come a time when civil disobedience is not only appropriate but necessary. This is when 1) government has crossed a certain "red line" that citizens believe cannot be allowed to occur and 2) when there is a large enough group to rally around.In the case of New York's SAFE Act, it appears that those two conditions seem to have been met if the 90% non-compliance estimates are remotely true. New York State may prove to be a political battleground that will set the precedent for any other states looking to act even more restrictive gun laws in the future.Read The Morning Roar every weekday Monday-Friday!The Lions of Liberty are on Twitter, Facebook & Google+Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
