Free kibbles

Obama's Marxist roots are showing with his proposal to cap executive pay for companies that get bailouts. Just refuse to bail them out. Problem solved. There is one potential good unintended consequence Obama might rue, companies may quit asking for bailouts. Maybe Obama overreached and will unintentionally end the bailout madness.

Obama signs SCHIP and explains this is his introduction to socialized medicine. Cato explains that SCHIP is significantly more expensive than advertised because families with private insurance drop it to take the taxpayer funded insurance. Duh.

It's absolutely scary how the press not only unquestioningly accepts Obama's Marxist decrees, but welcomes them. According to this article, the problem isn't that Obama is capping salaries, it's that the cap isn't retroactive. There is nothing common sense about government using force to determine executive compensation. The same thing about SCHIP. The press just goes right along with Obama's statement that it's government's job to provide health insurance for children. This unquestioning, even cheerleading, from the press is phenomenally dangerous.

Except for RINO Arlen Specter and a Missouri RINO, Senate Republicans stand firm against Democrat excesses on stimulus boondoggle. I expect the Democrats will eventually compromise and get this thing passed, but Republicans are working in the interests of the people for the first time in 8 years. Republicans would be silly to compromise though, because it will give Obama his first big victory and give him a big boost, making him appear a uniter when he's not. They should push for the bill they want and stand firm. This is what I hoped for when I said we might be better off if Obama wins because at least Republicans would work in our favor. If McCain had won, both Republicans and Democrats would have continued as big government parties.

Stimulus boondoggle revives the old tax deduction for interest on a car, but only if don't make too much money. Remember how simplifying the tax code created an economic rennaissance? Democrats want to go the other way.

Kyrgyzstan moves to shut down US airbase.

Democrat plan proves that the global warming fraud is the new communism. It has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with taking money from people who earn it and redistributing it to Democrat constituencies including foreign countries. I want an investigation into how much foreign money flows into Democrat coffers. This should be the highest priority issue for the Justice Dept. I think they're working for foreign governments even more now than when China was overtly buying them off during the Clinton presidency.

New restrictions on lead could shut down many small businesses and cost millions of jobs. I haven't noticed any lead poisoning stories in the news. Could Congress be making a disaster out of nothing? Like usual?

Communists in Cuba to explore for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Even communists are smarter than Democrats.

Man has trouble getting permission to pick up trash along highway. Free people don't have to ask permission from government to pick up trash or anything else.

City of 38,500 issues 45,000 red light citations at 4 intersections monitored by red light cameras.

Mises exposes the hypocrisy of calling Tom Daschle unethical for failing to pay $140,000 in taxes while allowing the Health and Human Services Dept. to take $730 billion from Americans by force for its own purposes.

Mises scholar gets it: "It seems like a universal principle: those who are out of power favor free markets more than those in power. So the agenda seems clear: keep everyone out of power."

Now that Daschle and Killefer were forced to withdraw because of tax problems, people are calling for Geithner to resign. Not only should Geithner resign because of his tax problems, he should throw himself on the mercy of the people for coming up with that abominable TARP program. Obama is rewarding corruption and failure. Obama's cabinet choices have been a disaster for him and are an ongoing disaster for the country. He's already burned much of the goodwill from the election. Even the liberals press is on him for his bad selections.

This short post captures many of the general fallacies of liberal thought. First, waste doesn't matter. Second, economics (otherwise called reality) doesn't matter. Third, leadership is all that matters. Finally, everything about this post is driven by pure emotion. Not reason. Not analysis. Not understanding. This post fantasizes that personality can magically change reality (in this case the laws of economics). That's the change liberals hoped Obama would bring. As if boldly doing bad things will produce good results but determining the best course of action then acting will produce bad results.

Cato's 2009 handbook for policymakers is online in pdf.

Because of Obama's tax cheats, Washington Post points out the obvious - our tax code is complicated. That's not why those guys had tax problems. They were cheating. But our tax code is absurd, not just because of the complexity, but because the income tax is archaic.

Cato shows that increasing the amount of funds government spends on education does not improve education. But it produces adults more indoctrinated in liberalism, and that's the real goal of liberals.

While exposing the failures of Keynesists, Cato seems to follow Friedman and the monetarists more than the Austrians.