Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

For four thousand years, price controls have created the same problem - shortages. It won't be any different under Obama or anybody else. OK, the price control problem is really older than 4,000 years.

"In Babylon some 4,000 years ago the Code of Hammurabi was a maze of price control regulations. "If a man hire a field-labourer, he shall give him eight gur of corn per annum"; "If a man hire a herdsman, he shall give him six gur of corn per annum"; "If a man hire a sixty-ton boat, he shall give a sixth part of a shekel of silver per diem for her hire." And on and on and on. Such laws "smothered economic progress in the empire for many centuries," as the historical record describes. Once these laws were laid down "there was a remarkable change in the fortunes of the people.""

I'll say. The Babylonians were conquered. With many in between, we end with:

"Price controls were the cause of the "energy crisis" of the 1970s and of the California energy crisis of the 1990s (only the wholesale price of electricity was deregulated there; controls were placed on retail prices). For more than four thousand years, dictators, despots, and politicians of all stripes have viewed price controls as the ultimate "something for nothing" promise to the public."

What do they say about those who fail to learn from history? They are us. We are them. Those are we. Something like that.

TAX AND SPEND:

Great cartoon illustrates how government taxes, borrowing and spending crowds out profitable private sector business.

HEALTH CARE:

Obama pushes health care oppression bill that's a compromise between the House and Senate bill. Shouldn't that be dead on arrival? No Senate Republican would vote for a bill worse than the one they didn't vote for previously, right?

WAR:

The trappings of empire - we're not an empire; were stupider than an empire - overseas supposedly require big-government at home. Why? There's nothing fundamental about that. The reason the two always go together is the character of the aristocrats who are willing to use force to impose their will on either foreigners or their own citizens includes willingness to use force on the other. It's a people problem. On the flip-side, the supposed principles of conservatism:

" free enterprise, liberty and constitutionally limited government are completely incompatible with empire and aggressive war."

The problem is those aren't the real principles of conservativism - those are just the principles conservatives pay lip service to. Conservatism is all about using government to force conservative values on other Americans and foreigners. Just like liberalism.

POLITICS:

This from Marco Rubio:

"These terrorists do not aim to kill us because we offended them. They attack us because they want to impose their world view on others, and America is standing in their way."

Really? Is that why they've sent hundreds of thousands of troops into the US to install a Muslim-style government? Oh wait a minute. That's us, not them. We're waging war on middle-eastern Muslims, not vice-versa. We've initiated a clash of civilizations, not vice-versa. We've been attacking and imposing our will on them for decades, not vice-versa. A small group of terrorists attacked us once in retaliation, and that group would have no popular support and would be isolated and neutered by mainstream Muslims if we'd quit dropping bombs on the heads of those mainstream Muslims and engage them in a mutually profitable system of voluntary exchange instead. Naturally Rubio is backed by the Bushes. The thought of Jeb Bush rising to power by 2012 is truly frightening.

86 percent of Laura Ingraham's responders say Ron Paul's CPAC victory is not representative of conservatives. If Ron Paul can poll 14 percent in the 2012 presidential race, if he runs, they won't be able to shut him out like they did last time. That would be excellent. His number could be higher because Paul supporters are probably turned off by Ingraham.

In a super interview, Lew Rockwell unwittingly explains why Ron Paul hasn't been corrupted by politics.

"This much is clear: the Paul movement has made a huge difference in bringing people to libertarian ideas. In some way, there is an element of tragedy in that it takes politics to wake people up. Ideally, people would discover the ideas of liberty through other means. Ron Paul agrees with this observation, by the way. He sees himself as an educator first. He chose politics because, for him, it was an effective route for his larger and more important goal. And what an extraordinary job he has done, in his writing and speaking and personal example for almost four decades. He has brought vast numbers of people into the light. That was always his dream."

I always knew he wasn't a regular politician - one of those guys who forces his will on others because he thinks he's doing the people's work - but I've been looking to find the corruption that happens to all professional politicians. It had to be there. But being a politician isn't an end in itself to Paul. It's a vehicle to be a teacher of liberty and economics. I'm glad somebody finally explained that to me. to a follow-up question about politicization of Rockwell's work, he responds:

"I would say no to that. Unless you are Ron Paul, politics is a dangerous business, and tempts people to say and do crazy things."

Even Rockwell's scared of the corrupting power of politics.

"Today we see anti-state feeling growing, picking up where it left off in the 1990s. But here is the problem. The left hates some aspects of the state and loves others. The right is the mirror image. The job of the libertarian is to get both sides to see that the other guys are half right. Think of the Tea Parties, for example. The crowds roar disapproval of socialism even as they cheer for socialistic military invasions."

Not to mention socialist domestic security forces.

"The empire is insanely overextended. At some point, we'll go the way of Britain and Rome. We can only hope that the U.S. takes this path in wisdom and not in desperation."

A half truth. Our problem isn't that the empire is overextended. Our problem is our domestic spending is unsustainable. This detail is important. For the all the costs our foreign policy brings upon us, our foreign policy is not our problem. Our domestic policy is. We could cut all foreign policy costs to zero, but we still couldn't pay for our domestic policy. If we cut our domestic expenses to zero, we could pay for our foreign policy. Entitlements are crushing America, not foreign policy. As I've said before, these things cannot be separated because of the nature of the aristocrats who implement these policies, but facts and details matter. Dollars matter.

I understand why Rockwell and other libertarians focus on war even though the cost of war are far less than the cost of domestic policy - human lives. They focus on what is seen versus what is unseen as Hazlitt warns us not to do in Economics in One Lesson. But I think the human costs of war and domestic policy are the same dollar for dollar, and therefore our domestic policy, because it costs us so much more than our foreign policy, cost more lives than our foreign policy in direct proportion to our spending on those policies. I want to rein in both, but domestic policy must be the focus. Plus there's greater political opportunity. Americans care more about themselves and their neighbors than foreigners. War against foreigners isn't personal. Once Americans understand that government is conquering and killing their fellow Americans, they'll stop government in its tracks on all fronts. That's why I think the libertarian focus on foreign policy and war against undeniably bad people is counterproductive. Let's focus on what works.

Local preschool can't get a loan to expand. There's more to this story that printed here. I want to know why the government was involved at all.

New Massachusetts Senator and Mitt Romney protoge Scott Brown joins 55 Democrats and four Republicans in support of Obama stimulus II, sometimes called a jobs bill. I suppose it's better than having a Democrat in office, but only by a hair. But isn't that the case will all Republicans?

You know I remember year after year how the CPAC straw poll was held up as a herald of all the conservative political movement. Isn't it weird to find out its totally meaningless now that Ron Paul won?

"Paul got 31% of the vote, a 40% margin over runner-up Mitt Romney’s 22% of the vote. Romney was the Beltway Conservative candidate, and had won the last three CPAC straw polls. Paul and Romney were followed by a number of single-digit fringe candidates such as Sarah Palin (7%), Tim Pawlenty (6%), Newt Gingrich (4%), and Mike Huckabee (4%).

The official line is: This doesn’t mean anything, folks. Our straw poll isn’t scientific. The people who win our straw votes never win the presidency or the Republican nomination anyway, so don’t pay it any attention."

Maybe it's not as meaningless as establishment Republicans want us to think or wish it was.

"As the nation’s economic and fiscal stability deteriorates, voter priorities are changing.

In the nation at large, independents are the sexiest voters around. Both Republicans and Democrats are wooing them as if every day is Valentine’s Day. And all the polls show that the independents are "fiscal conservatives" who put economic issues above social issues."

Remember when I said if 5 million people vote Libertarian, both parties will be forced to move toward freedom to win those voters? Maybe I wasn't as dumb as many thought it was. Just like when I predicted terrorists were going to strike us big-time a few years before 9/11, and I wrote newspaper after newspaper telling them so, being right while everybody else is wrong and 99 cents will get you a cup of coffee at McDonalds. After the fact, everything thinks predicting 9/11 was obvious, but very few of us predicted it before hand. After the US collapses, everybody will think it was obvious, but only a few of us are predicting it before hand. More on Ron Paul's straw poll victory:

"I noticed this morning that Faux News was reporting Ron Paul’s landslide victory in the CPAC poll of presidential preferences in the moving words at the bottom of the screen. But the next sentence was, “54% of CPAC attendees were between the ages of 18-25.”

Rather than recognizing that Ron Paul has the youth vote wrapped up among “conservatives,” the clear message here was “they’re just a bunch of kids, pay no attention to the poll.”

Funny, last year, when 57% of CPAC attendees were between 18-25, and neocon Massachusetts statist Mitt Romney won the CPAC poll, I don’t recall any such caveats."

The Republican establishment which owns Foxnews is working overtime to deny that Americans are fed up with the Republican and Democrat establishment.

"You’ve seen this excuse from the neoconned spokesmen and media: "Ron Paul won because a majority of CPAC attendees were college students, and we know that’s his strength. But they don’t reflect the country as a whole."

The truth: The percentage of students declined this year, to 48% from 52% in 2009. And the percentage of registrants aged 18 to 25 also declinedthis year, to 54% from 57% in 2009. (The percentage of those under 18 stayed the same both years – 2%.) So the growth in Ron Paul’s popularity cannot be dismissed as merely a surge of college or young voters."

Truth hurts.

"It’s now official – the race is between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. Let’s get it on!"

As promising as this poll is, that's pretty optimistic. Jeb Bush has yet to weigh in, and you know that's calculated. Jeb Bush is the like the perverted uncle hiding in the Bushes, so to speak, waiting to jump out and seize his opportunity, so to speak. Wait for it. It's coming. Bush and Romney are going to slug it out, distracting America with terrorist foreign policy baloney in an attempt to make them forget their domestic freedom and prosperity problem.

MISC:

Judge Napolitano rips George Washington for his treatment of slaves.