Needless to say, most laughed and called me alarmist. Only the Obama supporters are still laughing. Of course they thought we were turning into Nazi Germany when Bush was in charge. Nobody will be laughing when Obama seizes the remnants of our finance sector like he seized GM.
Partisan politics is distracting us from the reality of oppressive government. It's easy to blame this all on Obama, but that's wrong and dangerous, just as it was wrong and dangerous to blame it on Bush. Obama may be taking us the last few steps at breakneck speed, but both parties have been racing the country down this path for 100 years. Lincoln put us solidly on the path by destroying states rights after Jefferson's disciples lost power. Hamilton prepared the path for us when Washington was president and sooner when he had the General Welfare clause inserted in the Constitution, fully intending it would be abused as it has been. We have to stop the madness of the two parties and take our country back.
FASCISM:
Obama's pay fuhrer doesn't cut salaries at the socialized Fannie and Freddie. No, Mr. President, I'm not offended by any pay an executive receives. That's what happens in a competitive marketplace. Nor am I offended when people beg for money, even if those people run corporations like AIG, Citibank and Bank of America. That's human nature. I'm offended when politicians like you put a gun to my head and take money from me by force and give it away to these people.
Apparently that wasn't enough. The Fed announces pay restrictions for thousands of banks. Are you frigging kidding me? The companies that asked for bailout money are getting what they deserve for making a deal with the devil, but many of these companies and banks didn't ask for help. I think all the employees of those banks should strike, go to Washington and mob Congress until these pay restrictions are rescinded. Government is taking us to the verge of a general strike, which is part of Obama's plan, but the strikers will protest the government, not businesses, which isn't what he wants.
ECONOMY:
A lot has been said about how we can't spend or print our way to prosperity, and I've seen other attacks on specifics of Keynesianism, but I haven't read anybody attack Keynesianism on the basis that it declares all work to be equal and therefore work has no value. We're supposed to borrow and print money to pay people to work, but the work doesn't matter. Whether it's building a bridge to nowhere or digging a ditch then filling it back in, it doesn't matter. Waste doesn't matter. But if that was true, we could get the same effect by paying people not to work. What's the difference between paying somebody to dig and fill in ditches and paying them to nap, watch TV or do their nails? Keynesianism seems to completely ignore the role of the creation of wealth in an economy.
Businessmen always argue that it's a special circumstance when they're company wants government to intervene on their behalf. Nobody ever supports economic intervention in general, only when it benefits themselves and that's what they mean by special circumstance.
Prediction of currency controls: regulations to limit how much money you can take out of the country and taxes on purchasing foreign investments.
TAX AND SPEND:
Is anybody surprised that the cost of TARP is actually higher than the $700 billion advertised?
FEDERAL RESERVE:
I just discovered that the Fed printing money faster than it could grow on trees if it could grow on trees isn't responsible for the declining dollar. Trillion dollar deficits aren't responsible for the declining dollar. It's Matt Drudge's fault. If Drudge would just quit reporting on the declining dollar and keep the people in the dark, it would stop declining.
HEALTH CARE:
What do you do if you're Democrats and the people just won't let you force a government health insurance option that would destroy private health insurance down their throat? You change the name to... you guessed it... Medicare. This is a stroke of evil genius. I'm surprised they didn't just claim they were expanding Medicare to everybody earlier. People on Medicare love Medicare because everybody loves having other people's money handed to them. This is a way to fool seniors into thinking their coverage won't change and pass the Trojan horse for socialized medicine. This term came up a few times in August, and I was surprised Democrats didn't jump on this idea then. Of course Medicare for seniors is bankrupting the country already, but most voters obviously don't care about that. The senior vote will make all the difference.
This guy tells us what many of us already know about the government option:
"The truth is that the public plan is a carefully devised scheme, a sneaky strategy, to deceive American voters. It’s a political marketing ploy designed to move the nation to a single-payer system – like the one in Canada – over the next decade. The public option is the Trojan horse. On the outside it’s all about “choice and competition”, but once it has been dragged within the walls of American medicine it’s true nature will become evident. By that time, it’ll be too late."Yup. Includes links to all kinds of Democrats explaining that it's a Trojan horse.
"More damning still, we uncovered video of the original architect of the public option, Yale professor Jacob Hacker, describing how it was designed to not “frighten people into thinking they are going to lose their private insurance” even though that is the inevitable result. In another clip he denies the plan is a Trojan horse saying, on the contrary, “it’s right there”. In other words, it’s not even a secret. Most relevant of all, Hacker admits in another clip that the real advantage of his plan is that “at least you can make the claim that there is competition between the public and private sectors”. In other words, this is all a marketing strategy designed to get around public resistance to government-run health care."But liberals think this is a good thing. Liberals think surrendering power to Republicans is dangerous but surrendering power to Democrats is healthy, just like conservatives think the other way around. Surrendering power is never healthy no matter who is in charge.
State regulations drive up the cost of health care. True. But should the federal government override state regulations? What about states' rights? But regulations block interstate commerce (as well as charity as the essay mentions), and the constitution gives the federal government the power to knock down barriers to interstate commerce. Does that mean the federal government should knock down all regulations created by state governments? The interstate commerce clause is a delineated power of the federal government so it overrides states rights when they come into conflict. That's why the interstate commerce clause should be rewritten to narrowly allow the federal government to knock trade barriers, including regulations, erected by state governments and nothing else.
Cato asks why we don't fix the two public options we have now, Medicare and Medicaid, before we add a third one. Silly Cato asking questions like that. That probably got them on the president's enemies list.
Five minor reforms that would enable free market principles (but they are not free market reforms) to reduce the cost of health insurance and health care. These are not radical reforms by any stretch.
EDUCATION:
How does a governor award 100,000 degrees? Why is this a political topic?
WAR ON DRUGS:
Thousands of US drug police in 19 states arrest 300 in sweep on Mexican drug cartel in the US. The result of this will be higher prices for drugs. The government will claim this is a victory in the war on drugs, but the consequence of this raid is the drug cartels will become richer and more powerful because of the higher prices. We can never win this war. All it's doing is killing and imprisoning people who would otherwise be living normal, peaceful lives.
Think of the consequences. Suppose you're on Obama's enemy list. Rahm Emanuel goes down the list and picks out your name and calls your police department and leaves an anonymous tip that he saw you dealing drugs out of your house. A few nights later, a paramilitary police force busts in your door at 4am, shoots your dogs, puts a gun to your head, and if you're lucky enough to live through this, drags you to jail. While you're in jail, they ransack your house, knock your breakables to the floor, slit the seat cushions on your couch and do thousands of dollars worth of damage. When they don't find anything, they're as likely as not to plant evidence in your house in order to justify their raid. And they'll almost certainly get away with it.
Naming Obama and Emanuel in this makes it far fetched, but not that far fetched. Maybe it'll be an ex-girlfriend instead. Individuals use the justice system as a willing weapon against others. The point is we gave government this power, and government uses it against us, and government is escalating its use of force against us year after year to justify the power. Don't believe me? This is a systemic problem, the inevitable and foreseeable consequence of surrendering our freedom to eat, drink, smoke or inhale whatever we want to politicians, police, prosecutors and judges. We have to take our power and our freedom back.
Typical government-speak about failed programs, in this case Mexico's war on drugs:
""The most important thing is that the Mexican government is on the offensive," said Bernard Aronson, U.S. assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs from 1989 to 1993. "They're not in a state of denial. They're getting going.""And not to be outdone in the battle for worthless government-speak, another official said:
""I'm not sure where this is going, but something had to be done,""The consequences?
"The war has unleashed an unprecedented carnage as rival drug gangs fight for territory and routes into the lucrative U.S. market. They're also fighting among themselves for leadership spots as former drug lords are arrested or killed."Could you imagine if the director of a business unit said that? "We're not getting any results from our policy, and lots of people are getting killed as a consequence of our actions, but the important thing is we're on the offensive because something had to be done." That guy wouldn't just be fired, he'd be arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned for life. But we allow government to take our freedom and use it on policies that kill people, and instead of firing and imprisoning the politicians, we turn around and give them more of our power to kill more people. And we repeat that spiral for decades and centuries. It's insane. Finally something intelligent:
"The problem is not the drug themselves," he said. "The main reason for going after the drug-trafficking organizations is that they are corrupting public life."Somebody understands the problem is the black market, not the drugs, but naturally the policy empowers the black-marketeers at the expense of the people. The info in this article is amazing.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE:
Tell your senators not to vote for the thought crimes legislation.
WAR:
Report claims Bush administration used Pentagon propaganda techniques on Americans to generate support for the Iraq war. They sure didn't work very well. This doesn't seem like news to me. Of course the administration, Pentagon and retired generals all worked to generate support for a war they wanted. Do you think Roosevelt ran around telling the American people we shouldn't be in WWII? Do you think Washington ran around telling Americans we shouldn't be fighting the Revolutionary War? Name me one president who didn't try to increase support for the war he was fighting or wanted to fight.
It's amazing how often this happens. Today a wrote a rant about our constant mistaking of a vote for freedom, and tonight I run across an essay entitled "Western Export of the Ballot Box Elixir is Pure Hubris". US politicians have long used the excuse of an election in a primitive country to support their foreign wars. Bush was the latest champion and now Obama is taking up the cause. An election does not equal freedom. Democracies are not free. Gaining freedom is a process starting with security, then economic freedom which enables individuals to take responsibility for their own lives, the lives of their families and their futures. Once people gain prosperity from economic freedom, they can achieve personal freedom - the freedom to move about, obtain higher education, pursue art, etc. Only after those things have been obtained can people gain political freedom. As I wrote earlier, voting for which guy puts his boot on your neck and steals you blind is not freedom. This is a wonderful essay:
"If Osama bin Laden cannot be found, if the Taliban cannot be eliminated, if troops cannot be withdrawn, if victory cannot be declared, then western leaders must find a reason for soldiers to die. Like Crusaders of old, they are told to die for the sacrament of a holy grail, in this case the franchise. Therefore it must not be desecrated by dodgy registers, fabricated returns and bought voters' lists.And our misadventures there are reminiscent of the Odyssey.
...
The excuse that we are preventing another 9/11 is ludicrously thin. That event, whose plotting and training were in Europe and America, will cause the US to spend what Congress puts at a staggering $1.3 trillion in wars and related security by 2019. And still no one has arrested Bin Laden. It must be the most extravagant punitive expedition to the Asian mainland since Agamemnon set off for Troy.
...
We need look no further for an answer to the question posed by the American pundit Richard Haass. Surveying the wreckage of the Clinton/Bush/Blair years last summer, he asked why the west had squandered the legacy of its victory over communism. It had shifted Russia from humiliating defeat to chauvinist belligerence. It had antagonised half the Muslim world. It had left Europe squabbling and protectionist. China had risen to astonishing commercial power. America had beggared itself with military spending. In sum, the architects of victory had shot themselves in the foot."
MEDIA:
I'm glad somebody else has noticed that Obama's attack on Foxnews is pure Alinsky. I'd like to read this on Foxnews and from other news sources.
Special Report just reported that the White House today made the pay fuhrer available to all the pool networks except Foxnews. The pool reporters got together and refused to interview the fuhrer unless Foxnews was also allowed to interview him. Assuming this is true, I can't find a link to back it up, I'm impressed. They slapped down Obama's Alinsky play and stood on principle.
MISC:
In praise of The Dutchess.
The flu vaccine fiasco, like cash for clunkers and every government program before, shows once again that central planners have no way of comprehending the demand or costs for goods or services because there are no prices to guide them. This makes them unable to produce, transport or deliver goods or services to meet demand.
Another article on seasteading. This may be the last hope for liberty.
John Stossel celebrates Nobel Prize for economics winner Elinor Ostrom for showing that common property users can manage common property like fisheries and pastures without ownership or central planning. How'd that work out for the buffalo? Or the passenger pigeon? Europe's forests? How's that working out for ocean fisheries today? I'm sure she's found examples where this works, but there have to be external factors, most likely associated with community. If everybody knows each other, play golf together and go drinking together, I'm sure they can manage common property with a voluntary contract agreement. But if some of the fisherman are American, some are Japanese and some are Russians, trying to feed growing families and populations, some starving, that's not likely to happen, or at least not until the fishery is on the verge of destruction, maybe past the point of no return. The likely result will be the destruction of fisheries that we're experiencing right now. We know private ownership works. Visit any farm that's been run for centuries. I think ownership rights is the only thing that's going to save our fisheries.
Roosevelt meets Keynes.
Scientists discover 5,000 year old city sunk of southern Greece.
The powerful economy of Texas would make it a fine, independent country.
Tennessee General Assembly sends letter to the other 49 states proposing a "joint working group" about returning the federal government to its Constitutional limits.
"We invite your state to join with us to form a joint working group between the states to enumerate the abuses of authority by the federal government and to seek repeal of the assumption of powers and the imposed mandates."There's several links to www.tenthamendmentcenter.com in this letter. Is this the next step in creating a 10th amendment convention?
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