Free kibbles

Jonah Goldberg is absolutely right when he calls Obama's desire to exploit this crisis for a big government power grab forcing his radical liberal agenda down the throats of the citizens amoral. I've been trying to think of a good word to describe Obama, and evil didn't quite fit. Amoral fits perfectly. Obama has no compassion. He has a dangerous lack of empathy for other people. He doesn't care about his brother living in poverty in Kenya. He doesn't care about what's good for Americans and America. All he cares about is power. All he cares about is forcing people to do what he wants. He's a liar. He's manipulative. He's amoral. And so is his administration.

Thanks to socialists like Greenspan, Bernanke, Bush, Paulson, Dodd, Frank, and 100 years of socialist policies, the US lost $11 trillion in household wealth in 2008. Socialists in other countries were inflating with their central banks too, leading to one estimate that this crisis destroyed 45 percent of the world's wealth.

Time is running out on Obama. The sooner, the better.

Obama plans to more than double taxes on entrepreneurial partnership structures, driving venture capitalists out of the country, and threatening to turn Silicon Valley into a ghost town. I hope Obama fails at this, and I bet he will. But I can't help but be reminded of this essay in which a guy claims his "libertarian" Silicon Valley friends voted for Obama. My experience with silicon valley people is most were hard core, kool-aid drinking liberals who liked to pretend they were libertarians. They might just get what they deserve.

I don't feel the least bit sorry for Tim Geithner. Besides being a tax cheat, that's the jerk who forced TARP on us, along with Hank Paulson. This guy is the classic central planner. He thinks he can single handedly run our economy better than all 300 million Americans combined. Fact is, he doesn't have a clue what to do because central planning is not the answer and is never the answer. Freedom is the answer. We can't run Bush, Paulson and Greenspan out of town on a rail, they're already gone, but I hope we run Bernanke, Obama, Geithner, Dodd, and Frank out of town ASAP.

Obama's third pick for deputy Sec. of Treasury withdraws. Maybe Obama should stop looking at just corrupt Washington, Chicago and other insiders.

Freddie Mac sucks down another $30.8 billion from taxpayers. Thanks, aristocrats.

Slain white supremisist angry over Obama election had desire, know-how and parts to build a dirty bomb including depleted uranium supposedly from a US company. Instead of being on trial for murder, it sounds like we should give his wife who killed him a medal. Apparently this isn't huge news because the mainstream media doesn't want terrorist threats to boost Republicans. Now we know where the press ranks the people's right to know on their priority list.

1951 essay from Mises describing the political enemies and chances of classic liberalism (libertarianism) could have been ripped from today's headlines. I've often lamented that Americans don't learn from history, but when you read these decades old essays from the Mises guys, it's just amazing how much they sound like they were written yesterday.

Subconscious inferiority complexes and envy push people toward the parties of the Left. They rejoice in the policies of confiscating the greater part of the income and wealth of successful businessmen without grasping the fact that these policies harm their own material interests. Disregarding all the objections raised by economists, they firmly believe that they can get many good things for nothing.

Even in the United States, people — although enjoying the highest standard of living ever attained in history — are prepared to condemn capitalism as a vile economy of scarcity and to indulge in daydreams about an economy of abundance in which everybody will get everything "according to his needs." The case for freedom and material prosperity is hopeless. The future belongs to the demagogues who know nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations. Mankind is plunging into a return to the Dark Ages. Western civilization is doomed.

The main error of this widespread pessimism is the belief that the destructionist ideas and policies of our age sprang from the proletarians and are a "revolt of the masses." In fact, the masses — precisely because they are not creative and do not develop philosophies of their own — follow the leaders. The ideologies which produced all the mischief and catastrophes of our century are not an achievement of the mob. They are the feat of pseudoscholars and pseudointellectuals. They were propagated from the chairs of universities and from the pulpit, they were disseminated by the press, by novels and plays and by the movies and the radio. The intellectuals converted the masses to socialism and interventionism. These ideologies owe the power they have today to the fact that all means of communication have been turned over to their supporters and almost all dissenters have been virtually silenced.

Mises observation about the media of the day being dominated by statist forces should remind everybody of the need to keep the internet free.

Flanagan's Pub is hosting St. PatRocks' Day 2009.

Series of videos by John Stossel on the bailout madness.