The Jason Stapleton Program

Yesterday I had a story in the stack I didn't get to dive into as deeply as I wanted. It has to do with regulation and licensing.

I'm glad I didn't spend much time on it yesterday because today we have a couple of great examples in the news about the very subject of regulation. It turns out regulation will likely strengthen companies like Facebook and Google while harming up and coming, competitors.

If you've been listening to this show for very long, you already knew regulation hurts competition, protects large, established companies at the expense of smaller upstarts. Unfortunately, that kind of economic wisdom isn't taught in schools, so most people are oblivious to the danger of regulation and licensing.

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Bernie Sanders is back at it again. Working on legislation to offer any American who wants work a $15/hr government job. I'll explain why this is both stupid and impossible on today's show.

Jason

Yes, apparently there are bad people out there who are using legally purchased tools for nefarious purposes.

So what responsibility does Amazon have (if any) to ensure these tools are not falling into the wrong hands?

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The European Central Bank is backing down on a plan to require banks to put up more capital before nearly a trillion dollars of bad loans are written off.

This comes after overwhelming political pressure from countries and banks inside the EU who say the plan is unworkable.

Wouldn't it be great if all of us could unload our private debt onto the backs of the public? Unfortunately, that type of debt forgiveness is restricted to bankers and governments.

All that PLUS a great discussion on the movie Ready Player One.

Jason

You what to know how messed up our government is? Keep reading.

Before leaving is post-Comey shared three personal memos documenting conversations he had with Trump. Two of those documents were unclassified and one was classified. Comey went to the effort of redacting the classified portion of the memo of concern even though he had the power to declassify the information of interest in that memo.

Now that he's left the FBI someone else has changed the classification of one of the memos now claiming its content is classified.

The Justice Department is now looking into the issue to determine if Comey shared classified information with his friend.

Now keep in mind the information WAS NOT classified when he shared it but apparently, he can still be charged if the classification is changed later. (yeah WTF? That's what I said)

This is our legal system today.

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Turkey has just decided to repatriate 100% of its gold reserves from the US. Is it an attempt to start a new gold-backed currency or merely a chance to pillage the wealth of a nation? I'll discuss today.

I've got a bunch of stuff in the stack today, but at the end of today's episode, I discuss a question I get a lot. "What's your view on the death penalty?"

Libertarians are generally united in their opposition to the death penalty but why? Are there times when it's acceptable to kill someone for their crimes? What are they?

I'll discuss all of it on the show today.

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Is the war in Syria just cover for the central bankers to centralize power? Some say it is and if you can suspend your disbelief for a few minutes I'll do my best to explain why.

Great show today and it's good to be back.

Jason

If there was ever a new story that deserved to be omitted the headlines, it's the admission by Michael Cohen's lawyers that Sean Hannity is a client.

There is some question as to whether or not Hannity is actually a client but even if he is what does that mean? Answer: Absolutely nothing.

As a regular listener of this show, you know there is no love lost between Hannity and myself. But this is rediculous. Rachel Maddow would have you believe this is a bombshell. MSNBC is using terms like "shocked" and "floored" to describe the courtroom admission.

In the world of real journalism, this is a non-story. Unfortunately, real journalism is dead in America.