Most of our work in May was dedicated to Europe. The Notes From the Golden Age (NFTGA) Series continued with three videos celebrating the European Union, and dealing with the weird attractions of Euro-Skepticism. We provided a little counter-programming to the general media approach, which was filled with warnings about the new power of the anti-Europe populist parties.

We started off with two one-shot videos. The first was the (fairly successful) search engine bait of “Is Putin Hitler?” in which Neville Chamberlain walks us through why the two figures couldn’t be more different. The second was a meditation on the changing nature of media and journalism. It fits comfortably in the NFTGA category, so you know we’re optimistic about it!

We produced three EU videos. The first focused on the dominant historical position of European Violence and the EU’s role in shutting it down. The second focused on the ridiculousness of Euroskepticism, specifically in the UK context. The third video came out the day after the disappointing EU elections at the end of May. It focused on the Genius of European Expansion, and the democracy it has brought. Through reddit, this video, also featured above, became our fastest watched video ever.

May was a great month. It made my dream of making a career of this seem very, very, possible. Our May totals MORE THAN TRIPLED our April totals going from 6,978 to 21,100. We produced a sort of Thank you video. Most of this massive month was due to the continued success of our video on FATCA. More and more people are becoming aware of the problems that FATCA implementation will bring, and there is a real thirst for a decent video on the topic. Fun Stuff.

Many thanks for taking the time to make the channel as successful as it has been…

April was an exciting month here at the More Freedom Foundation. It was our first chance to cover an on-going news event, and it was pretty exciting. We believe that it is impossible to understand current news events without looking into the history behind it.

Our first video of the month continued our look at African development, and the truly great news that you should be thinking of whenever one of Africa’s 54 countries is experiencing a crisis.

Vladimir Putin did us a favor and hijacked most of the rest of April’s output. As much as I loathe the guy, he’s kind of got a point when it comes to NATO’s expansion. We took two approaches on the topic. One was a straightforward map-based video explaining Russia’s justified concerns. The other approach was a message from the “US Government” explaining the motivations behind NATO expansion with an honesty that real bureaucrats are not capable of.

My mother was kind enough to swing by Istanbul for a weekend, so we decided to collaborate on the third chapter of Notes From The Golden Age (NFTGA) focusing on the Cold War. People don’t spend enough time celebrating the fact that that is over, so we did our part.

We ended the month with a quantum leap in the quality of our production. “Appeasement” seems to be the only historical lesson that the US government has learned. We resurrected Senior Hitler Correspondent Neville Chamberlain to tell us about his experience, and how nothing since has really compared. It was a tricky video to act and produce, but it was pretty successful. You can see this fan favorite video here, or at the top of this post.

April was also an exciting month in terms of viewership. Our April totals MORE THAN DOUBLED our May totals going from 2,861 views to 6,978. Very exciting stuff.

If you want to hear more from us you can sign up for our e-mail list to the left, follow me on twitter, and if you haven’t done so yet, please do head over to Youtube and Subscribe!

The success of November’s FATCA video got us thinking. Would it be financially possible to do this full time? So far the answer is no, but we’ve been having a lot of fun. I left my job in February, and am now working with a great team to produce a new video every Tuesday. This week we uploaded our sixth video, a quick satirical sketch on the post cold war history of NATO and how it led to Ukraine.

March also included uploads of another five videos. On March 1st we uploaded a general introduction to the More Freedom Foundation Youtube channel. Later in the month, we introduced our web series Notes From the Golden Age, and also uploaded the first and second videos in the series, which both deal with Africa. The series tries to show that the world is in much better shape that we have been told, and describes some of the reasons why these facts are hidden. The series will return in a couple weeks to cover an entirely different topic.

We also uploaded the second of our videos on US immigration. Uploading these is always fun. They inevitably lead to endless arguments with white supremacists. You can watch the video and read the comments here.

Other than that we partnered with Nomad Politics to produce another piece on the impending implementation of FATCA.

Viewership is slowly rising, and we are excited to bring you a continuing series of videos in the coming months. Thanks for watching!

If you want to support our work, please share the videos you see here and sign up for the e-mail list to the left. If you are feeling generous, you can buy one of our essays

Despite an insanely busy and awesome year (I’m a very lucky dude), we managed to put together three videos, a new amazon broadsheet, and a bunch of blog posts.

I am most proud of our efforts against FATCA. FATCA is a crazy law that the United States Congress has decided to impose on the entire world. We are building a world-wide empire subject to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). I kept running into FATCA in my work as a legal consultant, and I realized that this stuff really needs to be described in layman’s terms. The US government says that it just goes after US tax cheats. Nobody likes them, so most journalists haven’t looked into it too much. When you look into the details, however, it becomes clear that there is a lot more going on. Its implementation involves over 500 pages of regulation, numerous agreements between the US government and other countries, and eventually individual agreements between the IRS and every bank in the world. We have tried to boil the regulations down to a four minute video, with a lot of swearing. To provide a more detailed and level-headed view, we’ve also published a new essay for the Amazon kindle.

We published two videos earlier in the year. I had noticed that all the really popular videos on youtube are music videos. So in a perhaps unwise fit of late night creativity we made one. In a more serious effort, we weighed in on the US immigration debate. Some say the video is a bit boring, but it deals with some important facts that Congress is ignoring in their discussions. Watching the video will make you more informed on the topic than most of Washington, DC.

Well that’s about it for 2013. We’ve got some new approaches and issues to tackle in 2014. It should be fun! We’ve now got a mailing list, which you can see to your left. Sign up if you want to be made aware of our future efforts. Thanks for watching and reading!

I have been working 60 hour weeks for most of this year, but I did manage to put two things together for this election fall. The first is a broadsheet entitled Avoiding the British Empire: How the United States Can Do Better in 7,000 Words. The polemic takes aim at a very broad subject, US Foreign Policy over the past 100 years or so. It tries to lay out the trajectory of the British Empire, and suggest some ways that the US can avoid its fate. Folks who have read it have been very kind. They have found it informative and occasionally amusing. There is a lot that goes on in our foreign policy establishment that is hard to explain. This pamphlet tries to do the explaining. Not bad for under a dollar.

We have also put together another short video, explaining why you should be voting for a third party candidate in the election that is coming up in a few weeks time. I am pretty pleased with this. If we progress as much in terms of quality and memorization next year we’ll be going viral for sure.

The reaction has been positive enough, and I am having enough fun to keep doing this. I would like to say it will be less than eleven months until the next product, but that would be over-ambitious. I haven’t figured out how to enable a non-spammy comment section, so if you want to get in touch, hit me up in the youtube comments. All praise, advice and abuse is welcome. Thanks.

We maintain two Twitter feeds.

@TheFederalGovt We attempt to get into the minds of our deranged leaders in Washington, DC.

@DoctahPangloss We post a steady stream of good news. It is only by keeping us afraid that they can keep us in chains.

Last month  I posted a small e-book and some videos on the evils of our drug war and the response has been overwhelming.  Between my channel and a pirated version the videos have been seen 2,500 times.  The e-pamphlet was briefly the #1 war on drugs book of any kind on Amazon. There are a couple of arguments I wish I had addressed better in the book or the video, however.  I also failed to suggest any next steps for the interested. This blog post is an attempt to address those gaps.

First the arguments.

My stuff does a decent job of pointing to the failures and injustices of the system, but it falls down on the broader philosophical implications, which I care deeply about. This video does a great job, and is worthy of your attention and re-posting

The e-book touches briefly on the fact that our local police departments are becoming paramilitary organizations. This article does a great job of outlining the full horror of it.

Beginning with the Military Cooperation and Law Enforcement Act of 1981, the Pentagon gave local and state police access to surplus military equipment for purposes of drug interdiction. By 1997, local police departments around the country had stockpiled 1.2 million pieces of gear, including thousands of military-style M-16 automatic rifles, body armor, helmets, grenade launchers, night vision goggles, even armored personnel carriers and helicopters.

This arms build-up is out of all proportion to any conceivable threat, and is used exclusively to terrorize American citizens. It strikes me as reminiscent of the growth of local military forces in Lebanon, prior to their disastrous civil war. Thankfully nothing similar seems in prospect in the US, but if it were, the necessary materials are now dispersed throughout the country.

On that depressing note, on to possible actions.

NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana laws is the granddaddy of drug policy organizations. They have been operating for over 40 years. Their website suggests a number of possible actions.

The Drug Policy Alliance is a somewhat newer, slicker organization. They take a more comprehensive view. They go beyond marijuana legalization to focus on potential treatment options and new approaches to our nation’s drug problem.

Both of these organizations are worthy of your support. They are working to establish a saner, safer, and more just country.

Thanks to all for the interest and support, and I hope you will keep tuning in as we continue to churn out tweets, blog posts, longer form writing, and the occasional video.