Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

For all China's growth and fundamental economic soundness, it still suffers from a centrally planned bubble economy.

Government now commands our economy.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Another mainstream publication promotes the Austrian theory:

"How many more crises must we endure until we realize the common denominator is the creation of money and credit by the Fed? Wall Street bankers and speculators, who try to game the system and make profits during each boom, are mere bit players in these crises. By fostering the booms and triggering the busts, the real villain is the institution of central banking itself. Thus, instead of providing stability to the economy, central banking has created great instability. Until this is understood, we will make little progress in preventing future crises or easing the current one."

It's hard to predict whether these positive reactions to government created crises will enable the people to overcome crushing government before it destroys our country. Right now, it sure doesn't look like it, but there is still hope.

HEALTH CARE:

This example shows you just can't communicate with bureaucrats. Becoming a bureaucrat forces a person's brain to only work in the bureaucratic manner.

"It's coming. The folks in DC will be snooping in my pantry within 5 years, regardless the party. And it will be under cover of reducing healthcare costs."

That's a fact. Government will require us to tell them what we eat, where we go out, how much exercise we got. They'll put RFID chips in our food and clothes to verify what we report. Under the guise of improving our health, we are on the way to becoming the most oppressed people in history. Can you imagine what Thomas Jefferson would do if he saw our government today?

Health care chart shows that less than twelve percent of health care costs are directly paid for by consumers. That's why our health care costs are out of control.

Obamacare puts freedom on life support.

The public option may not survive conference. Let's hope that kills the bill in the House. Funny how nobody in either party has much concern about the mandate.

GLOBAL WARMING:

How a climategate scientist became a full-time editor at Wikipedia to guarantee that only the alarmist view was presented on the site.

"When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it -- more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred -- over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley's global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement."

This fraud was impressively thorough.

WAR:

Even the New York Times is figuring out that government can't protect us, so we have to protect ourselves:

"Despite the billions spent since 2001 on intelligence and counterterrorism programs, sophisticated airport scanners and elaborate watch lists, it was something simpler that averted disaster on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit: alert and courageous passengers and crew members.

That's not my spin or my writing. That's the lead of the NYT piece on the attempted airplane bomb. Oh, and this: the government prevents the crime after the fact."

We have to stop feeding our false sense of security and start empowering ourselves to protect each other.

Yemen al Qaeda group claims responsibility for this attack. Put that prisoner of war in Guantanamo where he belongs. Quietly hunt down the members of this al Qaeda group and kill or capture them. Don't invade Yemen.

It does seem bizarre that we just started hearing about Yemen as a terrorist hot spot in the world, then suddenly some guy connected to an al Qaeda cell in Yemen is allowed on a plane which he tries to blow up. I don't believe there's a conspiracy here, but it's odd. Or maybe not. Maybe because of the ineptitude of government it was inevitable. Lieberman calls for war on Yemen. You've got to be kidding me. These freaks won't be happy until we've burned the entire Middle East to the ground.

The accomplice press dutifully parrots the claims of aristocrats that air strikes killed top al Qaeda leaders, but over and over again, those claims prove false. It just played out again in Yemen. I don't know where we got the idea that using airstrikes to target individuals was a good idea. I think using local mercenaries makes much more sense.

Steve Hayes just said that al Qaeda in Yemen is run by two former Guantanamo detainees. Confirmation. Oops.

Citizens are pushing back against new regulations. Thank goodness.

On airport security:

"I fear most airline security is simply a government make-work project designed to reduce public fears of flying rather than safeguard the passengers."

I'm sure not everybody is like that, as this story shows, but that's the driving force behind government run airport security. That's not to say we should ditch airport security. Multiple layers of security has been proven to be the most effective, but airport security must be turned over to the private sector to people who have a vested interest in being effective and keeping the process as painless for travelers as possible. Same with airline security.

Thankfully libertarians are powerfully attacking this false sense of security we demand from government.

How long have I been saying this?

"Roger Pilon touches on a crucial aspect of the most recent terrorist incident to strike the nation. Federal policymakers spend the vast majority of their time mucking around in properly state, local, and private activities, leaving them little time to spend on core federal issues such as defense and security.

There is little hard data to illustrate the point, but it needs much more public discussion. Do we want the president of the United States spending his time with briefings on Wall Street salaries and the advantages of windmill power, or on the growing Iranian nuclear threat?"

If our government was tiny and focused only on defending the country from enemies foreign and domestic, it would be much more accountable and could do those jobs much more effectively. But screwing around with roads, schools, global warming, health care, social security, etc. distracts the government and the people from making sure those basic tasks are done reasonably well.

Christopher Hitchens asks why our government is so bad at identifying guilty individuals but so good at punishing collective innocents. Only a person who thinks government is an altruist institution would ask that question, but once asked, the question leaves only one answer - government doesn't have our best interests at heart. Government has government's best interests at heart.

"By the way, I make a safe prediction: Nobody in that embassy or anywhere else in our national security system will lose his or her job as a consequence of this most recent disgrace."

Exactly. Because government has the power to tax, it doesn't have to be accountable. It funds itself through violence, not a system of voluntary exchange. If it fails, and you don't want to pay for the crummy services it forces on you, tough. The armed thugs will kick in your door and either kill you or beat you up, handcuff you, and kidnap you into a little cell where you will spend a significant portion of the rest of your life.

"What nobody in authority thinks us grown-up enough to be told is this: We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims. Our civil aviation is only the most psychologically frightening symbol of a plethora of potential targets. The future murderers will generally not be from refugee camps or slums (though they are being indoctrinated every day in our prisons); they will frequently be from educated backgrounds, and they will often not be from overseas at all. They are already in our suburbs and even in our military. We can expect to take casualties. The battle will go on for the rest of our lives. Those who plan our destruction know what they want, and they are prepared to kill and die for it. Those who don't get the point prefer to whine about "endless war," accidentally speaking the truth about something of which the attempted Christmas bombing over Michigan was only a foretaste. While we fumble with bureaucracy and euphemism, they are flying high."

A lot of truth in that paragraph, but this doesn't have to go on all our lives. We can adopt policies that don't create enemies faster than we can overcome them. We can bring all our troops home. We can let Arab Muslims determine their own fates instead of setting the entire Middle East on fire. This hatred demands enemy to focus on. We should stop being that enemy.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Is this the end of the current Iranian regime? Let's hope so. Even if it is, will whatever replaces it be materially different? Let's hope so. It's hard to tell because even though the opposition leader who had the election stolen from him by Ahmadinejad over the summer wasn't significantly different from Ahmadinejad, and the country is run by the mullahs, not the president anyway. But that opposition leader tapped into something more revolutionary and freedom-loving that has a chance to bring down the mullahs.

""And you look at this opposition movement, and you have to ask yourself how. They don't have a strong leader. They don't have a structure. They don't have an organization. But somehow they manage to mobilize and move out.""

It seems to be a real, grassroots revolution.

Obama to allow sale of arms to Taiwan. If Taiwan wants to buy arms to protect it from an attack from China, I'm OK with that. If China quits threatening Taiwan, then Taiwan won't need to buy weapons. We have a weird relationship with China. They have us over a barrel because our government needs their government to fund our government. On the flip side, we have China over a barrel because we can either default or monetize all of our government debt they hold. Each side has a nuclear option. Both governments were stupid to get in that situation.

MISC:

Quite a different story about Marc Rich.

I wonder how much of people's need for government is driven by a desire to feel they have some control over the world. If private organizations regulate financial markets, the people who don't belong to those organizations feel like they have no power over those markets, but if government regulates those markets, the people feel they have some power over them because of their vote.

How entrepreneurs improve culture.

How to put a giant snow drift trapping you in your house to good use.

Men who help clean get more sex. Hmmm.

Blaming subsidies for the Colts pulling their best players and losing is ridiculous. Subsidies or not, the organization will make much more money by winning the Super Bowl than by getting Manning hurt and getting knocked out of the playoffs. Whether you like the decision or not, this was ultimately a business decision that was unaffected by the stadium subsidy.

Americans fleeing to solidly red states. Immigrants flooding into blue states.