Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

The housing market continues to collapse.

Lord Geithner promises unlimited funds to cover the losses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Anybody who lends our government money is a fool. Please stop so we can fix this thing before it gets worse.

TAX AND SPEND:

Obama doubles welfare to foreign dictators to $48.764 billion.

"Some people would think that when you can't pay your own debts, borrowing more to give away would be slightly irresponsible. But those are the kind of bitter people who cling to their guns and religion, and will never amount to anything. Important people, the kind who win the Nobel Peace Prize in their spare time, know better."

LOL.

"Past US foreign aid has gone to Idi Amin, Julius Nyerere, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot (even after Pol Pot killed 25% of Cambodia's population). We also gave money to North Vietnam, helped fund the Taliban government of Afghanistan, gave nuclear reactors to North Korea, and back in the day helped the Pakistani spy agency ISI build up a real gung-ho guy named Osama Bin Laden. And of course it was also the ISI which made the Taliban powerful enough to take Afghanistan in the first place. "

How's that foreign welfare working out for us?

"Even in the early days, when some of the foreign aid was going to less-genocidal governments under the Marshall Plan, it still didn't work. Most of the Marshall Plan money went to England and France, built up their bureaucracies, and left them way behind Germany and Japan. Contrary to myth, Germany actually got less than no aid (their reparation payments were bigger than their Marshall plan share).

Foreign aid doesn't help our security (unless you think the North Korean and Pakistani nuclear bombs are going to help us). It doesn't help foreigners' security either. In many cases all we have done is supply both sides of conflicts with larger weapons. What sense does it make for us to buy expensive armaments for both Egypt and Israel, for both Pakistan and India?"

This guy is crushing foreign welfare.

276,000 federal employees owe back taxes.

HEALTH CARE:

Senate passes monstrous health care oppression bill. Now it goes to conference. We get one last shot to kill this killer before it kills us in both the House and the Senate.

Peter Schiff compares this health care oppression bill to a neutron bomb of the insurance industry:

"As business owners undergo the yearly ritual of passing through eye-popping health insurance premium increases to their employees, it's easy to understand why any attempt at health insurance reform would be met with some degree of hope. Unfortunately, President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are about to take a very bad system and make it unimaginably worse."

I think I can imagine it. This system was designed to fail by driving up prices and reducing quality of care. That's what it will do. Since Republicans won't do anything to free the system from the damage of government just like didn't the whole time Bush was in office, the next step will be Democrats forcing socialized medicine on us all.

"The bill's centerpiece is a clause prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on a pre-existing medical condition. However noble and marketable an idea, this proscription removes the very basis upon which any insurance model operates profitably."

This part of the bill has been horribly neglected because it sounds so nice on the face of it, but it guarantees the bankruptcy of the insurance industry.

"[T]he Senate bill imposes an annual fine which gradually escalates to $750 for those who fail to buy coverage. So what? I would gladly pay $750 in order to avoid the $8,000 per year I pay now for personal health insurance. Currently, I'm relatively healthy for a 46 year old and I don't anticipate making a big claim. But if I do, under the new rules I can always get 'insurance' after the fact. Heck, if I can stay healthy for the next couple of decades, I'll save a fortune. Think about how much easier the decision would be if I were 20 years younger! Since most people are capable of figuring this out, the entire insurance industry would collapse under such a system. "

It's designed to collapse and soon. Democrats will blame the non-existent free market and implement socialized medicine.

"Perhaps our elected officials actually intend to bite the hands that feed them. They could double-cross insurance companies by not raising the fine in five years, thereby forcing the industry into bankruptcy as millions of healthy people opt-out. During the ensuing 'insurance crisis,' our courageous leaders could ride to the rescue with a nationalized, single-payer system."

Hello? If Schiff would read this blog, he'd have learned that a lot sooner. Obviously the government will make some show of trying to save the insurance industry, but it will be just a show. This bill is designed to make socialized medicine inevitable.

The states have tried most of the provisions in Obamacare, and they've made prices go up and quality of care go down.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Private property rights as a means of limiting man's impact on climate. This should be the model for all environmentalism.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE:

Prosecutor made famous for convicting innocent people on trumped up child sex abuse charges retires. What's so sad about this is that he continued to get re-elected for 20 years after he imprisoned a bunch of innocent people. It highlights once again what I think the fundamental flaw of our justice system: juries have no incentive to acquit and every incentive to convict. In the old days, juries knew the defendants, the police, the victims, the lawyers and the judges. Because of that, they had a stake in making the right decision and they had the ability to sort out liars from those telling the truth. Today's juries aren't allowed to know anybody involved so they have no stake in the outcome other than to insure they don't let a criminal go free to victimize them later. And juries are a subset of voters who have no incentive to elect prosecutors who focus on justice instead of convictions. Voters and jurors, except for the tremendously small percentage who get falsely convicted, are better off sending innocent men to prison than allowing guilty men to go free. So are prosecutors. So are judges.

MISC:

St. Nicholas.

"His transformation into Father Christmas only occurred after the Dutch had emigrated to North America in the 17th century. In the New World, they continued to observe the feast day of Sinterklaas, as they called St Nicholas. This dialectical quirk became "Santa Claus"."

Blame the Dutch.

Good analysis of conservatives.

"As Lew Rockwell noted, "conservatives have two brains. One sees the government as a menace, something stupid, inefficient, brutal, isolated from real life, and the enemy of liberty. The other sees government as smart, wise, and all-knowing, a friend to all, in touch with life around the planet, and the friend to liberty everywhere.""

Or maybe they just see our government as better than other governments. The problem with conservatives is their support for smaller government isn't based on principle, it's only based on unhappiness with government's current intrusions. No conservative today is saying government must be smaller than it was in 1980, when Reagan won on a platform of reducing the size and scope of government and defeating the Soviets. Conservatives have gotten used to leviathan government, and they just wish it was a little smaller than liberals want it to be. Fundamentally, conservatives believe in good government as long as it's forcing conservative values on others just like liberals believe in good government as long as it's forcing liberal values on others. Neither believe in the principle that using violence to force one's will on another is immoral and always counterproductive. But why do libertarians always make this stupid comment?

"The conservative Bush War supporters’ being manipulated by emotional fear mongering can compare to the left’s being manipulated by the current "global warming" panic."

That statement is patently false, and makes me mad that people I agree with on almost every issue, people who are rational on almost every issue, people I voluntarily associate myself with, make that bogus statement. Terrorists really are trying to kill us. Terrorists really did kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11. There's no comparison to the deadly real threat of terrorists and complete fantasy of man-made global warming. They can criticize the policies all they want, but because of these completely bogus statements, most Americans don't take the libertarian movement seriously.

Appreciating Christianity.

Sears opens a drive-through department store.