Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Japanese government debt about to spark another global collapse.

In a case of dueling real experts, Jim Rogers says there is no bubble in China. But that's not really what he says. What he really says is the bubble in China won't burst in 2010. That's consistent with Peter Schiff and others who see a bubble in China, but also see enough savings to back it up for several years before it bursts (in 2012 according to the skyscraper index).

The Chamber of Commerce warns that government is dragging us into a double-dip recession, and it's right.

STATES RIGHTS:

New Jersey to join 10th amendment movement by legalizing medical marijuana.

TAX AND SPEND:

This essay elegantly explains why government spending cannot stimulate the economy.

"Ten months into President Barack Obama's first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an Associated Press analysis has found.

Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn't matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation, raising questions about Obama's argument that more road money would address an "urgent need to accelerate job growth."

This is not surprising, but no doubt the Krugmanites/Socialists will have an answer declaring that the real problem was that the government did not spend enough. Spend more, they tell us, and then you will see the positive results.

Why has this spending not had the desired effect? To answer that, one has to understand that an economy is not an amorphous blob into which one pours money in order to make the recipe complete. An economy has a very complex set of relationships in which all factors are valued relative to one another, and in the end the value of those factors of production is determined by the value that consumers place upon the final product that those factors create.

In other words, coal is valuable because it helps to make electricity, which we value. Electricity does not receive its value from coal; coal receives its value from electricity.

Furthermore, an economy that is functioning correctly is one in which the factors either are in balance or are not prevented from finding their proper relationships with one another. By piling on spending and forcing factors to be expended on pet government projects, the Obama administration (like the Bush administration before it) actually is diverting factors from the use that consumers prefer to uses that the political classes and their allies prefer.

This move actually makes economic activity more distorted and prevents the recovery from occurring. In fact, I can say confidently that this forced "massive public works" emphasis is making us poorer because it actually is a massive wealth transfer from the productive to the non-productive economic sectors."

Nicely said in very few words.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Fed profits from its own inflation, recording record profits. How can it not profit? It prints money. More info:

"The Federal Reserve System is not about making money at the expense of the government. It is about using a government-granted monopoly over money to regulate the economy to the benefit of a handful of large banks. This has always been its primary function.

The banking system is a cartel. The Federal Reserve System is the cartel's protector and enforcer."

And the benefit of the politicians. If it didn't benefit them, they wouldn't give this power to the cartel.

Rampant corruption from Lord Geithner at the Fed before he was exposed as a tax cheat and Obama made him Treasury Sec. reminds us that the Fed is a government protected monopoly.

"Last week it was revealed that when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve, he urged AIG officials not to disclose to the Securities Exchange Commission relevant details of agreements with banks to bail out Goldman Sachs. Apparently he felt at the time that regulators and the public would be angry that taxpayer money was used to fully compensate bankers who made some horrifically bad investment decisions.

"The reason the Fed wants secrecy is the people would go ballistic to find out that the only reason the Fed exists is to give sweetheart deals to bankers at our expense. The Fed is an agent of statism, an enemy of the creative destruction process at the heart of capitalism.

"Raiding Main Street to bail out Wall Street is a foolish idea. Main Street productivity and the strength of the dollar is the bedrock of the economy. You cannot gut this foundation without eventually toppling everything else. This is what too many policy makers either don’t understand or refuse to face. Or even worse, perhaps they do understand, but don’t care!"

At least Ron Paul publicly entertains the idea many know to be fact.

Fed appeals court decision ordering it to reveal the names of banks it went to extraordinary measures, meaning it spent lots of our money without any political process, to save.

HEALTH CARE:

All the corporations and unions who will benefit from Obamacare are joining the attack on Massachusetts Republican.

Unions convince Obama not to tax Cadillac insurance plans.

Only 36 percent of Americans approve of Obamacare. Obama says shut up, bend over, and take it.

Democrat fundraiser and operative says Obamacare will create 4 million jobs and that Mao Tse Tung was a great guy.

WAR ON DRUGS:

California close to legalizing pot for recreation. It's amazing what governments will do to avoid cutting spending in a fiscal crisis.

ENERGY:

Government control of utilities creates shortages.

WAR:

Would anybody be surprised to learn that the TSA has been lying about the ability of the nude scanners to store and transmit images?

"The TSA specified in 2008 documents that the machines must have image storage and sending abilities, the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said.

In the documents, obtained by the privacy group and provided to CNN, the TSA specifies that the body scanners it purchases must have the ability to store and send images when in "test mode."

That requirement leaves open the possibility the machines -- which can see beneath people's clothing -- can be abused by TSA insiders and hacked by outsiders, said EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg.

EPIC, a public-interest group focused on privacy and civil rights, obtained the technical specifications and vendor contracts through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit."

Why would anybody ever trust the government? These machines would prove a useful tool in the arsenal of private sector security companies, but because government can never do anything except hamhandedly, these machines will be immediately defeated by terrorists hiding bombs inside themselves in some way, and only law abiding citizens will suffer.

Canadian government airport screener makes 85 year old woman drop her pants for invasive inspection. As we become numb to government's abuses of individuals at airports, those abuses will spread into every aspect of our lives. Get ready for anal cavity searches at the courts, DMV then the supermarket. The Founding Fathers gave us everything, and by continuing to surrender our power to Republicans and Democrats, we're tossing freedom away like garbage. In 20 years we'll look back and realize we're as stupid as lemmings. No people will have ever given up so much and fallen so far by their own choices.

Obama's TSA nominee targets white, anti-government Christians as potential terrorists. Did I miss where white, anti-government Christians flew planes into buildings?

Lawyers for Guantanamo detainee ask judge to dismiss charges on grounds detainee was tortured and held without trial for five years. Any judge following the law would dismiss this case, and let's hope this one does. If he dismisses the case, the American people will be better protected from this kind of government abuse in the future and Obama will be forced to halt these civilian trials of war criminals, reestablishing that bright line that Bush and Obama have worked so hard to erase.

POLITICS:

Republicans trying to make Reid's remarks, which were nothing, into something. That's how the game's played. Democrats successfully made Trent Lott's remarks, which were nothing, into something and forced him to resign. The Republicans are stomping their feet like spoiled children because they can't do the same because of the double-standard. But you can't attack Republicans on this as if they're the only party that does it. You have to be honest and go after both of them, and this essay doesn't. Interesting point about Republicans removing Lott themselves. Of course he was as corrupt as the day is long, so I'm happy to see him gone just like I'd love to see Harry Reid gone. This is politics in America. Politics is a battle for power between Republican and Democrat aristocrats and none of them give a damn about the country or the people except for how those things can be used to advance their careers, i.e. their personal power.

MISC:

If you say that the winner off WWII was the large, collectivist state, you have to also acknowledge that the loser in WWII was the large, collectivist state. So that doesn't make any sense. The allies won WWII and enabled Democrats to write a glowing, false history of FDR and tremendously advance their statist agenda.

10 things to know about Washington D.C. I like number four:

"Your Congressman is a great guy – compared to the people who work under him. Talentless and unskilled political science majors are willing to do anything to get ahead. Commonly, we imagine them selling their souls on K Street for big lobbying cash. But, actually political science majors are willing to sell their souls for about 35K or 25K plus a fancy title on the Hill. Further, these morally vacuous know-nothings fill every D.C. workplace creating a surplus of cutthroats and office backstabbers unmatched by other industries. And if politics is too rough, you can always get one of those nice six-figure federal government payroll checks."

Another reminder that no matter how bad it is, it can always be worse. The worst of these worse underlings are the next generation's aristocrats.

I work out barefoot to strengthen my feet, and I was just talking to my girlfriend about what kind of shoes the original marathoner wore, so this article on running barefoot is interesting. So are the sort-of-shoes. Lines like this remind that people often don't have perspective:

"They say we need lots of arch support but for most of our biological history we didn’t even know what an arch was let alone how to support it."

And for most of that time we died by age 30. I'm not interested in going back there. But we are designed to go barefoot even over hard, broken ground, and my feet have gotten stronger since I started working out barefoot. The problem with the modern world outside is rusty nails and broken glass. These shoes look like they enable the barefoot benefit while protecting from the dangers.