Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

How GM and the UAW killed Saturn:

"Saturn's chief UAW apostle was Donald Ephlin, the visionary head of the union's GM department who passed away in 2000. Ephlin strongly believed that Detroit's auto makers and the UAW had to change from confrontation to collaboration."

Exactly. That's why I keep saying unions and management have to become partners in productivity, but as long as the unions have the power of coercion, which is inherently corrupting, that won't happen.

I don't see any new info in this article, but it bears repeating. Bush and Paulson forced financial to take TARP money against their will. Paulson lied to the people about TARP. I keep saying Paulson and Bernanke executed a coup and Bush ignorantly went along with it. Contrary to the accepted history, a horrible crisis didn't lead to TARP. TARP created a horrible crisis and guaranteed the election for Obama. Credit was flowing until TARP passed. Remember this all happened as Sarah Palin pulled McCain back into the lead in the polls.

TAX AND SPEND:

Post-mortem on the failed cash for clunkers programs:

"Last week U.S. automakers reported that new car sales for September, the first month since the clunker program expired, sank by 25% from a year earlier. Sales at GM and Chrysler fell by 45% and 42%, respectively. Ford was down about 5%. Some 700,000 cars were sold in the summer under the program as buyers received up to $4,500 to buy a new car they would probably have purchased anyway, so all the program seems to have done is steal those sales from the future. Exactly as critics predicted.
...
Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer.
...
In the category of all-time dumb ideas, cash for clunkers rivals the New Deal brainstorm to slaughter pigs to raise pork prices."

Just like many of us said.

So Obama is trying to force a second stimulus down our throats, but Democrats aren't calling it a second stimulus because the knows the people will jump down their throats if they do.

"White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday highlighted those political sensitivities, saying there “were no plans” for a second stimulus like the $787 billion package passed earlier this year. Instead, he said, the administration is looking at “extensions” of existing programs.
...
“More of a stimulus package is much more difficult at this point than it was in February,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of public affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey. “The deficit can become a political straitjacket to the Democrats.”"

Ya think? Obama and his Democrats are sneaky, sneaky aristocrats. Needless to say, this will cost more jobs. Remember when idiots used to claim Obama would cut spending just because he said so? Those people should do us all a favor and never vote again.

Did you know that "the federal government is a major owner of more than 600 U.S. financial institutions and banks, as well as two auto makers, an international insurance conglomerate, and numerous other businesses?" Thanks TARP. Get us out of here.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The dollar takes a huge blow as oil-rich Middle East nations work with China, Russia, Japan, France, India and Brazil to use alternative currencies to buy oil. We can thank the wise central planners at the Federal Reserve and their supporters in Congress for this.

"The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China's extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.
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China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures."

This is also a result of our interventionist foreign policy.

"Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China's growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China's reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro."

And this is a result of our interventionist domestic policy.

"Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq."

I'm sure it was just a coincidence.

FREE SPEECH:

Who would have guessed that the internet, not the Federal government, was the biggest threat to America? The Obama administration is hyping the threat from the internet in preparation for seizing control of it, and that's the real threat. Government control of our infrastructure has made us vulnerable. More government control will make us more vulnerable.

More on how the FTC claims it can regulate blogs."As I reported last year, the FTC has been waging war against small retailers of medicinal herbs. This rampage is directed against any website that dares to even suggest there may be some benefit to the use of herbs in treating diseases like cancer. The FTC is emphatic: No individual may speak about the health benefits of a product - even a legal product - without the express consent of the federal government. All speech not permitted is forbidden."

HEALTH CARE:

Big government health care oppression video.

Senate won't read Baucus bill because "the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life."

The Baucus bill severely harms health care for seniors.

"It gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to define quality, cost-effective care for each medical condition and penalize doctors who spend more on their patients.
The law establishing Medicare in 1965 barred the federal government from interfering in doctors' treatment decisions. Slowly, Medicare regulations have begun unraveling that protection. Now the Cantwell amendment finishes the job.
This is the most extreme change to Medicare ever. Dr. David McKalip, a Florida neurosurgeon and a board member of the Florida Medical Association, predicts: "The only doctors left in Medicare will be those willing to ration care and practice cookbook medicine.""

A lot of doctors will quit if this becomes law.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Barbara Boxer introduced her job killing tax and trade bill in the Senate.

WAR ON DRUGS:

We should end the war on drugs not just for utilitarian reasons but because of the principle of liberty.

WAR:

Obama wasn't waiting on a new strategy for Afghanistan. That was a ruse to buy time to rally support from his base. Harry Reid reports that he got support from Democrats, so we'll hear from the president soon on Afghanistan. Nice article from Great Britain on how Obama is playing politics with Democrats on Afghanistan.

"The divisions between some of Mr Obama’s civilian White House advisers and senior military personnel have become so heated in recent days that Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, was forced to appeal for calm as he admonished the top commander in Afghanistan for a speech he delivered in London last week."

You're not likely to read this in the mainstream media. Boy did I call that right.

"Mr Gates made one thing clear: that the US is not about to pull out. “We’re not leaving Afghanistan,” he said."

That too.

POLITICS:

Victor Davis Hanson exposes fraudulent cries of racism leveled at Obama's opposition.

Obama preparing a scapegoat because he won't be able to close Guantanamo on time.

MISC:

British Ministry of Defence report on how to stop leaks is leaked. Only government. The private sector has almost no leaks. This may be trivial to report, but this is the inevitable consequence of big government. Because government divides the people into winners and losers on every issue it touches, it alienates the entire population on some issues, including the population of government workers. The bigger government is, the more divisive it is and the more people in government who are alienated. Thus uncontrollable leaks.

Is California America's first failed state? Not in the terms we use for overseas countries, but it's an interesting application of the term.

Interesting story about possible execution of innocent man and a cover-up of the investigation into it. I don't know what Perry's motives to cover it up would be. It's in his best interest to uncover all the facts, and if this man was innocent, fix whatever was broken.

Top ten most frequently banned classics.

Rent control makes landlords look like greedy bastards and other policies that make workers and consumers angry at producers.

"Rent control is not the only example of the adverse effects of price controls. All price ceilings reduce the quantities traded, wiping out the wealth that would otherwise be created by mutually agreed-upon arrangements. They also increase discrimination (and evasion efforts) by lowering the cost of saying "none for you." And people blame the greedy bastards they deal with directly rather than the greedy bastards in government who are the actual cause and who impose the cost of doing their will on others without compensation."

I always wonder why the people who complain about greedy capitalists never complain about greedy politicians like politicians are somehow better than the rest of us and immune to human weaknesses. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the politicians have all the power.

Obama biography conclusively exposes that Bill Ayers ghost wrote Obama's first book Dreams From My Father.

"With the deadline pressing, Michelle recommended that Barack seek advice from 'his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.' Despite a large advance, Obama found himself 'hopelessly blocked.' After four futile years of trying to finish, Obama ‘sought advice from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.' This he did 'at Michelle's urging.'"

This is huge news, but where's the coverage? Don't tell me leftists in the mainstream media and academia are going to let Obama skate on literary fraud. Author also exposes the cozy working relationship between Obama and Ayers.

"Andersen explains their rationale: "Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be?""

From the main article:

"It is old news now that Ayers and Obama served on the boards of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund together, but in total, Obama worked with Ayers and other radicals on least six related non-profit boards and shared the same office for three years with Ayers and fellow radicals, Susan and Mike Klonsky."

This is it in a nutshell:

"He is looking more and more like a mere construct, a carefully crafted mouthpiece for a cabal of anonymous radicals furiously working to secure a permanent foothold in the halls of power."

That's exactly what Obama is, and we knew it before the election.

I hate it when people who have benefited so much from economic freedom like Warren Buffet call for higher taxes that would reduce economic freedom and harm us all.