Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

After a century of ever-growing profits from government at taxpayer expense, Wall Street is unhappy about Obama's new tax and plans to challenge it in court. Unfortunately for them, the courts are packed with interventionists because of that century of corruption. What goes around comes around, and the same corrupt intervention they've profited from all these decades is about to bite them in the ass. I'm not going to cry for Wall Street, but this tax will hurt all Americans.

Cato lists all the new taxes Obama and Democrats are pushing. Warning: it's a long list. Remember when Obama claimed he wasn't going to raise taxes on anybody with incomes less that $250,000? That was a good joke.

Americans prefer smaller government with fewer services over larger government with more services by 58-38. Don't tell Obama.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

This is a fantastic explanation of how central banks, by setting interest rates artificially low, drag civilization backwards.

"Let's say a hunting society using crude spears is at level 1 of capital accumulation. Bows and arrows are used at level 2, and traps at level 3. Using such a scale, an industrial society would have to be characterized as being several orders of magnitude above these levels. But, let's just say, for simplicity's sake, that in the early phases of its first industrial revolution, a given society was at level 8 of capital accumulation, and it subsequently advanced to level 9, then 10, and so on.

Now, let's say that the society at some point is cursed with a central bank. At the time of the central bank's first expansion of money and credit, the society is at level 10. Again, artificial expansion of the supply of money and credit makes the members of society think they are at a more advanced level than they really are. It makes them think they have sufficient capital goods to see through longer, more productive production processes, when they really don't.

And so let's say the monetary expansion is sufficient to make the members of the society think they are at level 11, instead of level 10. They make level 11–appropriate investments, which are simply unsustainable. The society is going through an economic bubble. The reality of the situation will eventually reveal itself to the members of society. That is the moment of the "bursting of the bubble."

Now you might think it would then simply be a matter of reallocating the capital to level 10–appropriate production processes. But that presupposes that capital is an amorphous blob, like a mass of clay, which can be divided up and merged together to any purpose. But just as the shaft of a curved bow makes a wretched spear, and much of the materials of an animal trap are useless for the production of bows, most of the investments made during a bubble are simply lost. As Jim Fedako has beautifully put it,

The standard view is that capital is clay, ready for the potter to reshape it in a moment's time. In contrast, the Austrian view takes the current structure of capital as a given, something that the entrepreneur must take into consideration when formulating his plans. If an entrepreneur wants to change the current structure of capital, he will wield dynamite and dozer, not water and wheel.

And so, having squandered its resources, our hypothetical society, which was acting as if it were at level 11, is likely to find itself taking multiple steps back. It may, at best, need to adopt level 9–appropriate methods of production."

That reminds me of all those torn up Dayton streets. The government wants us to think that was progress, but it was a step backwards as that wealth was taken by force from more productive uses. The central bank does this on a nationwide scale and in the private sector.

Time preference, interest rates and central banks.

HEALTH CARE:

Boortz is exactly right that a Republican victory in Massachusetts doesn't guarantee Obamacare will go down in flames. Like SPECTRE from James Bond, the Democrat leaders in Congress will do anything to achieve their evil plan. Don't expect the Democrats to accept a Republican victory. They've mastered the art of stealing elections through the courts. Now that Obama made this election a referendum on his agenda and himself, it would be doubly sweet if Brown wins.

"If Martha now loses, he can't plead it's nothing to do with him."

Of course he can. That's exactly what he'll do. But everybody in the country will see through the lie, but Obama will think he pulled it off.

GLOBAL WARMING:

IPCC busted for fraudulently presenting non-scientific alarm about Himalaya glaciers as science. The claim is likely to be retracted. The anthropogenic global warming fraud is falling apart so fast it's hard to keep up.

"Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change."

That last line is 100 percent wrong. The IPCC was set up to provide the appearance of legitimacy while corrupting science into supporting the political agenda of the UN.

POLITICS:

Good description of how badly Obama and Democrats have screwed up.

"Whether or not Republican Scott Brown wins today in Massachusetts, the special Senate election has already shaken up American politics. The close race to replace Ted Kennedy, liberalism's patron saint, shows that voters are rebelling even in the bluest of states against the last year's unbridled pursuit of partisan liberal governance.

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of President Obama's Inaugural, and it's worth recalling the extraordinary political opportunity he had a year ago. An anxious country was looking for leadership amid a recession, and Democrats had huge majorities and faced a dispirited, unpopular GOP. With monetary policy stimulus already flowing, Democrats were poised to get the political credit for the inevitable economic recovery.

Twelve months later, Mr. Obama's approval rating has fallen further and faster than any recent President's, Congress is despised, the public mood has shifted sharply to the right on the role of government, and a Republican could pick up a Senate seat in a state with no GOP Members of Congress and that Mr. Obama carried by 26 points."

Democrats didn't even collapse that fast after Clinton took office.

It's OK for Democrats to parachute people in from out of the state to support their candidates, but when Republicans do it, Democrats get upset.

Republican Brown wins 52 - 47. Massachusetts hasn't had Republican Senator since the 70s. This is probably the most earthshaking political development in America since Reagan's huge victory in 1980. As disgusted as Americans were with Republicans, they're significantly more disgusted with Democrats. You'd think with all that disgust with two parties, Americans would stop voting for them, but they don't. Independents who voted for Obama a year ago voted against him in droves in this election.

"Independent voters—typically centrist, white and working-class—backed President Barack Obama and the Democrats in 2008. But Massachusetts is now the third Obama-won state in the past three months where independents have swung decisively Republican."

Coakley conceded, so it's unlikely there will be a legal challenge. Thank goodness.

Brown seems like an honest guy with good motives, but we'll see how that changes in a few years. Unfortunately, like all of them, he's going to Washington to do the people's business and work with the other party, but that's not what we need. We need representatives who understand the people should do their own work and that the only thing we need from them is reducing the huge burden of government that makes it so hard for people to solve their problems.

Barbara Boxer may be in trouble in California in 2010. How sweet would that be? I love to see these socialist clowns thrown out.

MEDIA:

Even the liberal Associated Press is down on Obama.

"according to the latest Gallup Poll, he entered his second year with one of the lowest approval ratings of any president in the last half-century"

He earned it. This picture shows Obama's already getting gray in his hair.