Free kibbles

STATES RIGHTS:

South Carolina legislator wants to nullify federal legal tender laws? Not quite. Instead of passing a law that would free the people to use whatever they want, he wants to mandate they use gold and silver. We don't need to trade federal mandates for state mandates.

Scalia sides with George III forbidding US states from seceding.

SOCIALISM:

In addition to the government owning GM and a warning to Japan over ousting US troops, we can add unions to the reason the government is smearing Toyota. This is Obama's Chicago-style thug politics in action.

Misplaced praise for primitive state-owned bank that couldn't possibly survive without the explicit guarantee of taking money from taxpayers by force should it lose money.

"The state earns roughly 0.25 percent less interest than state agencies would get from a commercial institution. The bank also pays no state or federal taxes and has no deposit insurance; North Dakota taxpayers are on the hook for any losses."

Life's good when you don't have any risk.

ECONOMY:

Apparently it only takes $31,169 to create a job in the private sector instead of the $50,000 I've been using. Obama is costing us a lot more jobs than I estimated.

European bond market freezes up causing companies to stop issuing bonds to raise funds.

"BusinessEurope, the EU-wide lobby, warned this week of a "very worrying situation" as it become harder to raise money at a viable cost, if at all. The group called on the European Central Bank to send a "clear signal" about its collateral policy. Fears of tougher ECB rules are a key factor causing market flight from Greek debt.

The sudden halt in bond issues is disturbing since companies have been relying on capital markets to raise money as an alternative to Europe's fragile banks. The ECB said on Tuesday that 42pc of small businesses in the eurozone had reported worsening credit conditions in the second half of last year, despite the emergency stimulus of the authorities.

Conditions appear to be deteriorating. Bank loans to companies contracted at an annual rate of 1.9pc in November and 2.3pc in December. Consumer credit also fell. The Bundesbank fears that disastrous earnings last year will cause scores of German companies to breach loan covenants, triggering a wave of downgrades that further damage German banks and potentially setting off a second wave of the credit crisis."

Here comes the next downturn.

As the PIGS problem plays out, author predicts July could be big trigger because Spain needs to raise a bunch of money then, and there are no buyers for Spanish debt.

TAX AND SPEND:

The cost of government debt. Interest on government debt.

Democrats pass paygo then immediately use the emergency spending process to get around it. They only passed it so they could pretend to be fiscally responsible.

Obama a bigger spender than even FDR. This essay says he won't outborrow FDR, but that's wrong because the author is using Obama's absurdly optimistic economic recovery figures.

Scott Brown ran as a compromiser in Massachusetts, so Harry Reid is twisting his arm to compromise on a stimulus II. Don't be a Romney. Government can't create jobs.

Obama's stimulus was supposed to be for infrastructure spending. How often did he claim that? So home come the highway fund is going bankrupt?

EU strips Greece of voting power because it needs a bailout. That's at least some negative consequence.

"While the symbolic move to suspend Greece of its voting rights at one meeting makes no practical difference, it marks a constitutional watershed and represents a crushing loss of sovereignty."

Another reason why this EU deal is terrible all the way around.

Comparison of the EU countries lecturing Greece to a bunch of boozers lecturing their hardest drinking member before giving another drink. Too accurate. It's interesting that the EU keeps saying it will bailout Greece, but there's plan. The voters of northern countries don't like it. Of course they wouldn't like if their banks collapse if Greece defaulted either. But until a plan is laid out and approved, all this talk of a bailout is empty rhetoric.

"The Eurocrats know that if Greece gets financial grease, Spain and Portugal are waiting in the wings. Greece will not be a one-time bailout. It will establish a precedent."

Everybody knows this. This bailout isn't a done deal.

State and local governments going broke. Federal too.

Obama's budget panel is a crock. He's using this as cover to escape his promise not to raise taxes. Obama could have asked for a smaller budget, but he didn't. He could ask for higher taxes, but he doesn't want to take responsibility. This is a charade, and Republicans should boycott it. The VAT tax is the answer Obama is looking for specifically because the question is how to fund bigger, more oppressive government.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

In order for government to stay in power, it's propagandists must lie for it. This author calls Alan Greenspan, the central planner for our money supply, interest rates and our economy in general, a libertarian. The sickening part is Greenspan was a protoge of Ayn Rand, though recent reports have surfaced that he never understood her philosophy, he was just a sycophant.

Not all plans for monetary reform are better. Specifically, having the government take over the Fed would be bad.

EDUCATION:

This graph from Cato is amazing. It shows how many teachers the government school system has added by taking more and more money from taxpayers by force, and it also shows that the percentage change in math and reading skills has been exactly zero. The problem has never been lack of money. The problem is the government monopoly.

I like this idea of allowing students to graduate two years early. Students should be able to graduate at any time they complete the requirements.

Administrators and teachers busted for monitoring students at home using cameras on school supplied notebook computers. I bet those perverts had a lot of fun.

John Stossel paraphrases my line - educating our children is far to important a task to leave to the government.

HEALTH CARE:

Mandating coverage of preexisting conditions means price controls, and price controls always produce shortages.

GLOBAL WARMING:

UN Climate chief to resign. This may boost the global warming scam.

ENERGY:

Cato explains why the government has to make loans for nuclear power plants that it shouldn't - natural gas plants are more cost effective. This is why the Founding Fathers didn't give government power to make loans to any business.

POLICE STATE:

What's wrong with this picture?"To become a licensed practicing cosmetologist in the State of Arkansas, an applicant must pass a state board examination and complete 2,000 hours of specialized training. For an investment of 600 hours an applicant can qualify to work as a manicurist or instructor.

While Arkansas strictly regulates those who cut hair or paint nails in private, voluntary transactions, it imposes no training or licensing standards whatsoever on armed people clothed in government-issued costumes and the supposed authority to inflict lethal violence on others.

“The second night I ever put on a badge and gun I was riding in my own car,” recalls Crittenden County Chief Deputy Tommy Martin. At the time, Martin was 21 years old and hadn’t spent so much as a minute inside a police academy classroom, notes Jill Monier of Mephis’s Fox News affiliate.

“According to Arkansas state law, officers do not have to be certified for up to a year after they’re hired,” observes Monier. “The Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training says they can get an 8 month extension on top of that. So for almost 2 years, an officer can patrol the streets, by his or herself, and enforce the law without having any kind of training.”"Sounds about right.

DHS agents have lost 180 weapons.

WAR:

Bomb threat forces United Airlines flight to land in Utah. Does it seem like we see more and more of this the more government oppresses Americans at home and kills foreigners abroad? It does to me.

Reason rips our Afghan government-in-a-box strategy. You can't lay this at the feet of the commander. Petraeus didn't do this in Iraq. Petraeus empowered and worked with local leaders. Government-in-a-box from on high is Obama's world-view.

FOREIGN POLICY:

IAEA reports secret Iranian programs could be designed to develop a nuclear missile.

"In a strongly worded report, the IAEA challenged Iran to explain purchases of sensitive technology as well as secret tests of high-precision detonators and missile reentry systems -- experiments closely associated with atomic warheads. Although much of the research took place nearly a decade ago, the report said some tests "seem to have continued beyond 2004."

The date is significant because it contradicts a bedrock assumption by U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran halted weapons-related research in 2003. U.S. officials are in the process of revising their key judgments about whether Iran is seeking actual nuclear weapons, or just the capability to quickly produce them."

If this has been known for a decade, why is it coming out now? This whole process is screwy. You can't trust anybody on either side.

"The IAEA report confirmed that Iranian officials had already produced a small, first batch of uranium enriched to nearly 20 percent. More significantly, IAEA inspectors found that Iran had moved nearly all of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to the small pilot plant configured for higher levels of enrichment, the agency said."

So much for Ahmadinejad's claim of enriching uranium to 20 percent being a bluff.

POLITICS:

Karl Rove tells tea partiers to disassociate themselves with cranks and conspiracy nuts like Ron Paul and line up behind the establishment Republican power brokers. The country would be a lot better off if Rove would crawl under a rock.

A committee of big-government conservatives drafts a manifesto in an attempt to harness the tea parties. Everybody and their brother has a manifesto today.

Big government Mitt Romney attacks Obamacare with no hint of hypocrisy. What a slime. Aristocrats are not like you and me. They're not normal. They have no shame because they have no morals. All they care about is their own power. I don't want any aristocratic freak who can pretend he didn't force a health care mandate down the throats of the people of Massachusetts lecturing me about American values. The only American value I care about from aristocrats is freedom, and Romney doesn't have it.

I-75 has been under construction for about 20 years, and not it's moving into phase two, scheduled to last until 2013. I bet it takes 10 years longer than that. Naturally, it will rip up the highway through downtown Dayton for all those years. Lovely.

MISC:

Texas man sets his house on fire then intentionally crashes a small plane into an IRS building. Wow. That's somebody who's really fed up with government. On the one hand, this will be used to gin up paranoia about right-wing, anti-government extremists. On the other hand, the violence government uses against us is driving people to react in kind. If a group of muggers on your street robbed you at gunpoint of 30 percent of your income year after year after year, drove you into destitution and nobody stopped them, you would have no choice but to respond with force. Government is that group of muggers. Reports of citizens rescues. The people are always the first defenders, even when the people are IRS agents. Apparently this guy tried to kill his wife and daughter too. Look for calls to regulation general aviation. This is not domestic terrorism because it was an attack on the government, not private citizens. The news is giving this guy's name and his manifesto. That kind of irresponsible aggrandizement of lunatics creates copycats. Reading his manifesto, he sounds more like a leftist, hating religion and corporations, than a right-winger, anti-government type, but it sounds like the bailouts were the straws that broke his back. The finally lines of his manifesto show he's an avowed Marxist, but I guarantee this will be painted as an attack by a right-wing extremist.

Jeffrey Tucker describes all the items from ten years ago he realized he has no more use for. The digital revolution has been amazing, and always, laws are far behind.

"Here's some of what I found: video tapes of short clips of ideas and events that are now all on YouTube; a printout of contacts generated by my own Palm Pilot, all of which are now back on a handheld device that syncs through cyberspace with any online device; my ancient Palm Pilot itself, which is about as useful as a pet rock; first print runs of legislation before Congress, now all on the Internet and searchable; two big plastic trays, one labeled "in box" and one labeled "out box," now replaced by a gargantuan archive of emails that I can access in seconds; photographs of this and that, easily scanned and posted and shared with the world; scholarly journals (say no more); pile after pile of weekly magazines and newspaper clippings, all long ago digitized; cassette recorders for doing interviews; once-treasured software packages that now seem as sophisticated as cave drawings; a "world clock"; a thermometer with a wire you stick outside the window.

I put all 200 pounds of it into contractor bags and put it in the dumpster."

All obsolete. That is a shockingly fast evolution. But it's an evolution that people keep up with seamlessly. Government is still decades behind, and it can never catch up. This is another great essay by Tucker.