Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Critics blame George Bush for the court ruling the FCC had no power to regulate the internet. If he's to blame, I say hooray for George Bush for internet freedom.

SOCIALISM:

You know any essay that begins:

"Just about everything that people think they know about labor unions and wage rates is wrong."

is going to be good.

FASCISM:

President Obama slips and tells the truth again. This time he said that he thinks at some point people have made enough money, meaning in Obama's vision of the world, he's the guy who will determine that. He must hate when he slips like that. What he doesn't understand is if he tried to put limits on that, the people who had made enough according to him would leave the country. Of course that's why totalitarian countries imprison their citizens and turn them into full time slaves (instead of just part time slaves like we are now), and the US is on that path with its draconian laws about confiscating wealth if an American tries to leave the country.

CEOs of big corporations love Obama. Corporations don't become gigantic in a free market. Fierce competition limits their size, marketshare and profit margins. The only way corporations can become so big and powerful for so long is when government protects them from competition by interfering in the market. CEOs lobby for more government regulation of the marketplace so they can capture the regulations, use them to crush more competitors and have the marketplace to themselves. They can charge higher prices for lower quality goods and services and make money by investing in the political economy than the private economy. Obama is the super-regulator, and CEOs love that. Right up until Obama seizes control of their companies and dictates their salaries or fires them. Only then do they realize their mistake.

Pouring salt in our wounds.

"It almost seems surreal that a government agency would begin to scrutinize the list of ingredients in every single food product in America and then "work with" – that is, force – their manufacturers to ensure that incrementally less salt was added to the foods over time. (What would this agency be called, the Department of HomeBland Security?) Yet, this is the reality with which we are faced."

We're the stupidest people on the planet. We do this to ourselves by voting for the same two power-hungry parties every election.

"It is an insult to basic human dignity for governments to declare that they are better off deciding what you and I eat, because we just can’t handle eating the right way by ourselves. After all, if you are what you eat, and someone else controls what you eat, what are you then?"

It's not just an insult to human dignity. It's a violation of the right to the pursuit of happiness of both producer and consumer.

ECONOMY:

This guy shares my pessimism about the future of the US and western civilization when he says our imminent big collapse in the next ten years will make the Great Depression look like The Philadelphia Story. Our debt problem is tremendously worse than when I originally wrote that essay.

Video of Barney Frank in 2005 pooh-poohing reports of a housing bubble. And this is one of the main guys, along with Geithner and Bernanke who never recognized the housing bubble either, we empowered to resolve this crisis. How do you think that's going to work out for us? This guy is an embarrassment to the people of Massachusetts and to the entire country.

REGULATION:

How come beef broth tastes like water? You know the answer, but do you know the consequences?

How zoning laws harm communities.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The Fed buying government bonds with funny-money so Congress can continue spending us into oblivion makes author have nightmares

"I sprinted outside to the bunker door, hurriedly threw it open and ran to the FRA to see what was (pant, pant) happening. My breath coming in ragged gasps, I was horrified to see that they had increased Fed Credit by a staggering $20.5 billion last week! Yikes!

And then, to add insult to injury, the Fed bought up $21.5 billion in US government securities last week, bailing out their slimy buddies, like banks and miscellaneous mortgage holders, and/or monetizing the insane increases in the national debt that Congress is running up, which, at last count, jumped by a hefty $42 billion last week, too!

...

Perhaps it is lack of sleep causing my distress and my recurrent nightmares, or perhaps it is The Economist magazine’s “commodity-price index” that brings on such gruesome “We’re freaking doomed!” thoughts, as their Dollar Index shows the prices of “All items” up a blistering 32.2% over the last year, “Industrials (all)” up a whopping 82%, “Non-food agriculturals” up a staggering 90.1%, metals up a hefty 78.3%, which does not even get into how oil is up 76.8% from last year! Yow! Yow!

Or perhaps it was John Williams at shadowstats.com figuring that overall inflation in prices is running at a terrifying 9.5% that makes my hands tremble so, but whatever it is that is eating me (pun intended), at least I know that it is gold, silver and oil that will save me financially, while this pain inside me is probably just bottled up aggravation that will go away when the kids are old enough for me to legally kick them out."

Government loves the invisible inflation tax best of all.

The Fed is offering CDs to banks, so instead of making loans with their new money, they can put the money into CDs at the Fed and earn interest on them. This is to fight inflation, but the Fed wants the banks to make loans, and this will make it less likely they will. What's the point of printing money and giving it to banks if the bank is just going to put in a CD back at the Fed?

HEALTH CARE:

States opting out of Obamacare provision, and Democrats blame Republicans, not one of whom voted for the bill. That cracks me up.

POLICE STATE:

250th person falsely convicted of rape exonerated by DNA. Untold thousands or more are still imprisoned because prosecutors refuse to allow testing. That's because prosecutors don't care about justice. All they care about is getting re-elected, and that means they don't want their phony convictions publicized. Unless you're rich and famous, the justice system is a railroad.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

I never said Arizona's illegal immigration law wouldn't be effective. Oppression tends to be effective when the target is highly visible like day workers. It's the supposedly unintentional consequences like the abuse and subsequent beating of US citizens that's the problem. But this won't boost Arizona's economy. The people who leave will take their spending and savings with them, making Arizona poorer.

Terry stops happen all the time. Police just lie about them. They get away with illegal searches by claiming, "I patted down the suspect for my own safety." Cop after cop after cop parrots this same line word for word. It's obvious they've been instructed to memorize that line and say it on the stand no matter what. They also claim they searched with the back of a hand or a flat hand just as they've been instructed to claim even though there's no way they could have identified something as illegal drugs by doing so (you're allowed to have a pebble or baggies in your pocket). If you watch three or four drug trials, it's so obvious that it would be comical if it wasn't so corrupt. It's like they're reading verbatim  from an instruction manual - which they probably memorized. Prosecutors and judges are in on the corruption and rubber-stamp this lie even though the only people who have reason to fear for their safety are the so-called suspects invariably surrounded and outnumbered by armed cops who regularly get away with beating and shooting people. With a wink and nod, the suspect gets prosecuted and convicted even though the search was illegal. This is how cops, prosecutors and judges get around the higher standard of probable cause. The lower reasonable suspicion standard in this Arizona law gives cops more justification to harass everybody, citizen or not, Hispanic or not, and the result will be more police violence against citizens and more corrupt prosecutions.

Victor Davis Hanson completely ignores the reason I'm against this Arizona law. I wonder if he ignored it on purpose or if it never crosses his mind that police, prosecutors and judge are corrupt. His comparison between presenting ID for a voluntary transaction that he can walk away from and government agents forcing an American citizen to show ID at the point of the government's gun is inexcusable. The former is normal American life. The latter is fascism.

I often wondered about this myself, but never questioned that it means the federal government should secure the border. That was lazy of me.

"That ragged, toothless old document, the US Constitution, authorizes Congress only one duty remotely related to immigration…with only seven words. Article I, Section 8 says: "(Congress shall have the power) To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.""

That isn't a power to secure the border. That's just to write laws for citizenship. That means the power to secure the borders belongs to the states.

"In 1875 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that immigration was a federal responsibility. Then the Immigration Act of 1891 established an Office of the Superintendent of Immigration within the Treasury Department. A "head tax" of fifty cents per person was assessed on each immigrant."

The Constitution is the highest law of the land, not the Supreme Court. Imagine how much better immigration enforcement would be if the states controlled it themselves. Texas, Arizona and New Mexico would get the job done. California wouldn't let immigrants flood through their gates, suck up California resources, then move on to greener pastures in other states.


Reason understands the problem:

"One of the dictionary definitions of "contact" is "immediate proximity," which suggests that anytime a possible illegal immigrant comes in sight of a cop, the cop has a legal duty to check her papers.

Law professor Miller says "lawful contact" could also mean any normal interaction a cop has with ordinary people. If a Hispanic asks a patrolman for directions, she could expose herself to immigration questions. If an officer walks up to someone and starts a conversation without detaining him—something police are allowed to do—he may have established "lawful contact."

...

Of course, even if they have reason to pull someone over, police are not supposed to demand documents unless they have "reasonable suspicion" that someone is here illegally. But—aside from instances of guys hiding in trunks—what does that mean if it doesn't mean checking anyone who looks or sounds Latino? Illegal immigrants don't normally wear shirts that say "Fence Jumpers Local 302."

Given that even the governor doesn't know what an illegal immigrant looks like, police may often have trouble articulating a reason for interrogating someone. In that case, the law may be largely irrelevant. If the most obvious grounds for reasonable suspicion are race-based—and thus illegal—cops may elect to do nothing more often than not."

A corollary to "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" can be stated "If a law can be abused by government agents, it will be, and the more easily a law can be abused by government agents, the more it will be." This law not only can be abused, it's begging for cops to abuse it, and they will.

POLITICS:

Some American Thinker guy presents a watered down version of what I've been saying about government in general and Obama specifically. He calls Obama a foreigner in our midst and compares the Obama administration to a foreign occupation. I've been saying our government - under both parties - is conquering us for quite a while. The difference between Bush and Obama is Bush looted the country on behalf of mainstream American interests like the oil business, Christians and the military-industrial complex. Those things are as American as apple pie, but that looting is just as destructive as the Democrats' looting. Obama is looting and oppressing all Americans on behalf of Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, Marxists and Black Liberation Theologists. Those are more like Soviet interests than American, and that's why his government feels so much more foreign. But if we don't wake up to the realization that both parties are working together to divide and loot our country into oppression and abject poverty for their personal gain and the gain of their cronies and that who the cronies are don't matter, our country is doomed.

Arizona legislature drops bill demanding presidential candidates produce birth certificates. They have this backwards. They should have made this bill law but not the illegal immigration bill.

Here's a little bit of good news.  The Governor of the Bank of England predicts:

"Whichever party wins the election faces electoral disaster, the Bank of England governor has warned.

“It will have to impose such severe spending cuts and tax rises that it will be kicked out at the first opportunity and stay out of power for a generation, says Mervyn King."

Spending cuts are always good.

Can Ron Paul (or Sarah Palin, God forbid) pull a Goldwater, and if so, will the establishment Republicans sabotage him (or her, God forbid) the same way they sabotaged Goldwater? That's a good reminder that Republicans will sell the country down the river in a heartbeat if somebody tries to take away their power. That's what passes for patriotism in the Republican party.

"Mitt Romney should be the next Republican nominee. No less than 81 percent of Republican "insiders" say that Romney is the "most likely" to challenge Barack Obama in 2012, according to a January National Journal poll."

If Republicans nominate Mitt Romney, conservatives should start a new party to replace the Republicans the way the Republicans replaced the Whigs.

"Romney attempted to follow this same game plan. He dropped out in 2008 and soon became a strong advocate for McCain. He is currently campaigning and raising money for 2010 Republican candidates."

Romney's playing the game the way it's long worked for Republicans.

"Goldwater's day was different. The establishment ran away from "grotesque burlesque of the conservative," to quote The Saturday Evening Post. Today's Republican establishment is running towards its conservative wing. In recent weeks Dick Cheney, Eric Cantor and Romney have all endorsed Rubio.

The establishment's move nearer to its grassroots has paid dividends within the party. Only 63 percent of Republicans favorably rated their party in spring 2009. That rating rose above 80 percent by autumn and has since steadied."

So the establishment Republicans are effectively co-opting the tea partiers. This is very bad news. Ousting a few Republican incumbents won't change anything worth nothing. It's going to take a wholesale turnover of Republican incumbents and the ousting of many Democrat incumbents, and I don't see that happening. The tea parties are too little, too Republican and too late.

"Today's activism does not approach the political significance of its 1960s counterpart (one reason: the modern GOP establishment is far nearer to Goldwater than the midcentury Republican old-guard)."

That's quite a declaration. I'm skeptical.

MISC:

Epic mobile home commercial.

How can anybody who signs a petition expect privacy?

UN puts Iran on Commission for Women's Rights. I guess they want to export the stoning of women all around the world.

Being a fatist is not like being a racist. Being fat is a choice. It's the result of behavior. It tells you something about the character of the individual.

Obama bans new US drilling as if one accident proves all oil platforms are unsafe. This is keeping every kid from recess because one kid skipped school.

As if the volcano in Iceland didn't cause enough problems, a volcano in Guatemala erupted.

As the US descends into economic madness, El Salvador (yeah, that El Salvador) has a thriving economy.

"Since entrepreneurs here can pretty much locate a business wherever they please, these malls are all located next to one another along the Pan-American Highway, the major artery that bisects El Salvador. As one could imagine, this proximity caused a traffic nightmare. Not content with the state’s timetable on traffic improvements, the mall owners themselves paid for an ingenious series of bridges and overpasses that relieved the congestion. State highway workers performed the actual construction but it was a round-the-clock operation that could have taken years to finish without private intervention."

That could never happen in the US. Thanks to our oppressive government, even the old Marxist banana republics are doing better than the US. This shows you the transformative power of economic freedom which we are rapidly surrendering.

The Tragedy of Government Regulations

The Tragedy of Government Regulations

by Mark Luedtke

They say tragedies come in threes. We recently witnessed the tragedy of the near collapse of our financial system, the collapse of a coal mine in West Virginia and the collapse of an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. People died in all these collapses. The easy thing to do is to look at these as three isolated incidents and call on government to tighten regulations on these industries, and that's exactly what's happening. But it's the wrong thing to do.

Government made Goldman-Sachs into its scapegoat for the financial collapse with the SEC filing a lawsuit against the company that even Bill Clinton says has no merit. A Senate subcommittee dragged Goldman executives in front of cameras and publicly flogged them. Claiming the financial sector, which is regulated by the SEC, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Office of Thrift Supervision, is under-regulated, Senator Chris Dodd, retiring under fire for corruption, is pushing a 1,400 page bill of oppressive regulations for financial businesses. As always, nobody in Congress has read the whole bill - our politicians in Washington can't be bothered with such trivial wastes of time - yet Democrats are pushing for a vote. Republicans already caved and allowed this bill to come to the Senate floor for debate, so we know some version of it will become law. But the dirty little secret nobody talks about is that Goldman-Sachs supports Dodd's bill.

In the wake of the April 2010 Massey Energy mine collapse in West Virginia, a review discovered government agents weren't enforcing regulations. 25 people died. A Senate review discovered that mine regulations were riddled with loopholes. Regulators proposed new oil rig safety regulations in wake of BP's Gulf of Mexico oil platform collapse in April 2010. 11 people died. Now an oil spill threatens the Gulf coast. Every time a tragedy happens, regulators propose new regulations even though regulations failed to prevent the tragedy in the first place.

But all these tragedies have one thing in common: they're all the result of companies taking dangerous risks. Before we jump to the conclusion that more regulation is the answer, maybe we should ask and answer a few simple questions in order to discover the root cause of these tragedies.

1) Why do companies take dangerous risks that all too often end in tragedy? Because the consequences of failure are too low compared to the reward for success. If a single failure meant bankruptcy or at least threatened to bankrupt the company, companies would not take these risks.

2) Why don't companies face bankruptcy when one of these failures occur? Because they don't face robust competition. A competitive marketplace would force companies to operate at razor-thin margins, and a tragic failure like any of the three mentioned above would likely force a company into bankruptcy where its assets and profitable operations would be gobbled up by other companies and the rest liquidated. In such an environment, companies would not take the kinds of risks that lead to tragedies.

3) Why don't companies face robust competition? Because government regulations protect the biggest corporations from robust competition.

Government regulations add to the costs of doing business. Because of economies of scale, the companies that can best absorb the additional costs of regulation are the biggest companies. Additional regulations drive smaller and marginal producers out of the marketplace, reducing competition. As government piles on more and more regulations, more companies are forced out of the marketplace until only a few gigantic corporations remain. That's why heavily regulated industries like finance, coal mining and oil production are dominated by a few gigantic companies.

One consequence of this restricted competition is higher prices and lower quality products which enrich the corporations at the expense of consumers. Because these companies face little competition and their options for competition between themselves are limited by government regulations, they can sell lower quality products at a higher price. Another consequence is regulatory capture in which these giant corporations, through campaign donations, end up controlling the regulatory agencies that are supposed to oversee them to benefit themselves at the expense of what little competition remains, enabling them to grow even bigger. That's why the biggest corporations always support more regulations. We've seen that in all three examples above. This is the mechanism that produces corporations that politicians tell us are too big to fail.

Government regulations enable corporations to earn exaggerated profits and develop deep pockets to the point where they can take deadly risks with people's lives knowing the reward will outweigh the costs of occasional failure. Because government protects them from competition and failure, corporations develop a culture of arrogance that leads to increased, dangerous risk. These tragedies are caused by the very regulations that are supposed to prevent them. The solution is simple. To insure a safe work environment for workers in all industries, we should abolish the government regulations and empower a free marketplace with robust competition.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Nevada's mining industry is booming.

TAX AND SPEND:

This talk of Obamacare being on the table for Obama's debt commission is a red herring. This is just a charade to make the panel look legitimate. A panel of ten Democrats and eight Republicans needing 14 to agree isn't going to cut Obamacare. They're going to recommend a VAT. This is a fait accompli.

The reason Obama needs as debt commission is Americans know he won't tell the truth.

The average federal government employee makes twice as much as the average private sector employee who pays his or her salary.

"As of 2008, the average federal salary was $119,982, compared with $59,909 for the average private sector employee."

The American people should be outraged, but we just take it.

REGULATION:

Bill Clinton blames the current economic crisis on abandoning the gold standard and calls the timing of the Goldman suit suspicious. What? I don't like it when Bill Clinton makes sense. Some of this is still goofy though.

Here's the lack of regulation that Obama and Democrats pretend exists on Wall Street:

"For all the lamentation of our allegedly scanty policing of Wall Street, the financial industry already answers to a host of regulators, including the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and, not least, the Securities and Exchange Commission. "

Like we need more regulation. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, government regulation isn't the solution to our problems, government regulation is our problem. We need to end government regulation to restore the only regulatory force that has ever been effective - regulation through competition and consumer choice.

"The great villain in the deregulation myth is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1999, which repealed some restrictions of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, namely those preventing bank holding companies from owning other kinds of financial firms. Critics charge that Gramm-Leach-Bliley broke down the walls between banks and other kinds of financial institutions, thereby allowing enormous systemic risk to percolate through the financial world. This critique is the keystone of the “blame deregulation” case, but it doesn’t hold up: While Gramm-Leach-Bliley did facilitate a number of mergers and the general consolidation of the financial-services industry, it did not eliminate restrictions on traditional depository banks’ securities activities. In any case, it was investment banks, such as Lehman Brothers, that were at the center of the crisis, and they would have been able to make the same badinvestments if Gramm-Leach-Bliley had never been passed."

Another government lie exposed. More follow.


Good op-ed:

"None of these developments occurred because of unrestrained market forces. They happened because of policies designed to thwart the market’s tendency to punish excessive risk-taking, translating into short-term economic growth that the political class especially valued when expanding welfare and warfare spending in the years following 9/11.

Today, such factors are being placed in the memory hole by the very people who created this situation. It’s politically expedient to blame greed, as if basic human nature somehow changed from 1995 to 2005. Such strategies deflect responsibility while justifying the continued socialization of capital markets."

Government regulations enable companies to avoid the penalties imposed by the marketplace for excessive risk. It happens in every industry. We've seen it recently in financial collapse, the mine collapse and the oil well collapse. It's all the same problem - government regulations protecting big companies from the market forces that impose discipline. This stuff would be virtually non-existent in a free market.



HEALTH CARE:


Republicans demanding an investigation into whether or not Obamacare will increase spending on health care. Isn't that supposed to be investigated before the plan is voted on? We did this to ourselves.


GLOBAL WARMING:

Fannie Mae owns patent on carbon cap and trade exchange. This is nuts.

In an important reminder that Al Gore doesn't care about his carbon footprint, just ours, he just purchased a nice little place on the ocean.

"The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms."

Be sure and support Gore's tax and trade scheme so he can afford to burn more CO2 in the future while we move back into grass huts.

WAR:

Are we part of a gang war in Afghanistan? We're definitely part of a civil war, and that might well be called a gang war. Why did we go to Afghanistan and start a civil war?

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Another aspect of draconian immigration laws... in Mexico.

POLITICS:

CNN says Christ's decision to run as an independent sets up an "entertaining" race. That's what we want out of politices, right? Entertainment? Who cares if they're destroying the country as long as they entertain us?

I hope incumbents of both parties get punished this year.

Hopefully Schiff's book will translate into votes in Connecticut.

MEDIA:

Quoting Boortz:

"Since March 28, ABC, CBS and NBC put together only broached the topic of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac one time. But Goldman Sachs and the circumstances surrounding an SEC investigation were mentioned 37 times."

Maybe if the government had sued Fannie and Freddie instead, it would be the other way around. I have a hard time faulting the media on this other than for just following the leader.

News flash: Media Matters has a liberal bias. Did it ever claim otherwise?

MISC:

Another example of a company that has so much of its money looted from it by government and spends so much of its resources profiting from the political economy that it failed to properly safeguard its private economy resources - this leaking oil well. In an environment with no political economy to siphon off resources, protect giant companies from competition and generate profit from government regulations, accidents like this and the West Virginia mine collapse would be virtually non-existent because companies couldn't afford them. They'd be operating on razor thin profit margins, and one accident would mean almost certain bankruptcy. We've seen everywhere in the world without exception - economic freedom produces a cleaner environment. Government interference in the marketplace produces a dirtier environment.

Time bartering tax free.

Free Puerto Rico.

Supreme Court makes right decision on cross.

"The Supreme Court gave its approval Wednesday to displaying a cross on public land to honor fallen soldiers, saying the Constitution "does not require the eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm.""

It certainly does not.

Convicted American pedophile priest discovered working with kids in Holland.

"Notorious pedophile priest Father Oliver O'Grady is back in his old haunts in Ireland a free man after fleeing Rotterdam in Holland, where it was discovered that he was working with children and in a local Catholic church, calling himself "Brother Francis."

O'Grady abused hundreds of children during his thirty years in America as a priest. One victim was only nine months old. He served seven years out of a 14-year prison sentence before being deported to Ireland in 2003.

O'Grady was unmasked in Holland a few weeks ago after a 2006 documentary called "Deliver us from Evil" was finally shown in the country.  The documentary is based on his activities while in America and the priest was immediately recognized.

According to the filmmaker Amy Berg, who made "Deliver Us from Evil" and who was contacted by local Dutch parishioners, O'Grady was "contacted by Dutch police officers that had been tipped off by his neighbors who had seen an advertisement for the film.

"O'Grady quickly disguised himself and fled, taking a train from Rotterdam to Schtipol. He managed to catch the last plane out of Amsterdam on Aer Lingus at 20:45.

...

Local police in Ireland say they can do nothing, as O'Grady has not committed any crime since he was deported from America in 2003. He is due to receive a large retirement benefit from the church when he turns 65 in June, according to Berg."

The Catholic Church is really cracking down on those pedophiles.

Suggestion that the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion might have been eco-terrorism. As cynical as I am, that never crossed my mind.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Peter Schiff on why China is the center of the economic world: the Chinese save their money.

"While I attended an economic conference last week in Shanghai, I found it notable – but not surprising – that two former Secretaries of the Treasury, John Snow and Hank Paulson, as well as current Treasury Secretary Tim Geither, and former President George W. Bush were then in the country at the same time. The fact that so many key American power brokers (myself not included) were in China simultaneously is no coincidence. In an overly indebted world, the $2.5 trillion that China holds in foreign reserves is acting as a center of economic gravity, inexorably pulling all market participants into its orbit."

The corollary to that is for America to regain its dominant economic position, Americans must save their money. The government must stop punishing savings with the income tax and the Fed must stop punishing savings with the inflation tax and holding interest rates artificially low. As for China's monetary policy:

"The effect of current Chinese currency policy (which, despite Beijing's protests to the contrary, is manipulation pure and simple) is to make the U.S. dollar more valuable and the yuan less valuable. As a result, the benefits of manipulation accrue to Americans, not the Chinese. We get pay raises; they get pay cuts. Americans use their stronger dollars to buy products they would otherwise not have been able to afford. On the flip side, the Chinese people do without products that they otherwise would have been able to afford had their government not transferred their purchasing power to us."

China didn't put us over this barrel. We lifted it up, climbed under it and handed it to them:

"By the same token, if China were to stop manipulating the dollar higher, it would remove the props currently supporting our dysfunctional economy. American interest rates and consumer prices would soar, and our economy would collapse. Meanwhile, China would experience the opposite effect. Chinese consumer prices would fall, immediately raising living standards for average Chinese workers, whose higher real wages would finally allow them to fully enjoy the fruits of their labor."

Here's the real scary part.

"Soon they will see the light, and when they do, it's lights out for American hegemony. If you think China is important today, just wait a few years. For example, while the Chinese automobile market is now the largest in the world, 90% of Chinese car buyers pay cash. In contrast, only 15% of American car buyers do so. In other words, Chinese consumers can actually afford their cars, while most Americans cannot. Without huge car payments, Chinese consumers are in much better shape not only to trade up to newer cars in the future, but to purchase other products as well. This suggests huge future growth, not only in automobiles but also in other consumer products as well."

So as soon as China realizes its in its best interest to let its currency float, the US economy crash and China's economy explodes (like 10 percent growth every year isn't exploding enough). China would become the world's superpower virtually and the US would become a third world country overnight. It's good to be reminded that no matter how bad you think things are, they can always be worse. The solution to this problem is to quit printing money, let interest rates float, abolish the income and payroll taxes, and for Americans to save their money. That'll cause a short, sharp correction, then our economy will bounce back stronger than ever.

TAX AND SPEND:

Stimulus bills cannot create jobs because they take money out of the productive private sector, waste some of it on government, then inject less money back into the private sector in places with less value than where Americans would have put it. Stimulus boondoggles move jobs from productive, private economy jobs to unproductive, political economy jobs, making us all poorer.

Jeffrey Tucker wonders why Greece is so often at the forefront of international social crises. I think it's geography. Why did western civilization arise and flourish there? It's at the great crossroads from Africa and the Middle East to Europe. Why did it play such a great role in the great religions? It's been on the border of Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East for 1300 years. More cultures intersect and overlap in Greece, Turkey and the Middle East than anywhere else in the world.

Let me get this straight - since Greece is drowning in debt from too much taxing and spending, the US should adopt a VAT just like Greece to avoid becoming like Greece. In what world does this make sense? Should we also adopt Greece's 14 month year to avoid being like Greece?

"The sensible real-world answer, many economists argue, is a value-added tax that would encourage saving at the same time it pays down the deficit to manageable levels."

The only reason somebody would advocate following Greece down this path while pretending that it would take us in a different direction is because he or she is evil. All these VAT supporters are evil because the only reason to advocate the complex, expensive VAT over a simple sales tax is most of the VAT is hidden from the consumer. The VAT is inherently underhanded as opposed to a sales tax that is transparent. An often overlooked benefit of the FairTax is its transparency. Note these guys aren't advocating replacing the income tax, payroll taxes and other taxes with the VAT like the FairTax does. They're talking about piling it on top of all these existing taxes.

Nations are scapegoating financial firms, as the Goldman circus showed, to distract the people of the world from the real threat to civilization: government debt.

"As Jim Rogers points out, why are we focusing on banks rather than the practices of governments. The risk we face is with entire governments collapsing. A bank is almost nothing in comparison with that. How many banks after all are larger than Greece? And they're just a small fish in the pond. Wait till the other beggar nations come knocking on the European Union door. Then the clueless will begin to understand what it is we face, if they're willing to tear the mask off of it and call it like it is; especially the mainstream media, whose coverage is so slanted and clueless it can't be trusted in that regard."

Slanted and clueless is right.

"Rogers also continues to point out the days of the power of the huge financial institutions are over anyway, and as far as investing goes, we need to focus on those who produce real things, like raw materials and agricultural. That's where the economic power and investment opportunities are shifting, and as he always notes, those who make the money in the future will be the farmers.

Or I would add, those who invest in commodities and real stuff will be those who make the money."

Farms are looking pretty good right now.

Super-rich Russians to flee Britain because of oppressive taxes.

REGULATION:

This headline misses the point. Our aristocrats are the ones without conscious. It's a job requirement. The way they tried to scapegoat Goldman is a perfect example. Grandstanding Senator Levin uses the s-word 11 times during the Goldman circus yesterday in hopes of winning some votes from his angry base. It's kind of funny to see Congress and Goldman go at it. It's like seeing a rich-bitch mom get in a hair-pulling fight with her spoiled brat daughter at the galleria. But don't bet on Congress to take away Goldman's allowance. This is all for show. Congress and Goldman are pushing financial reform that will make them both richer and more powerful and us poorer.

For the third day, Republicans and a couple Democrats blocked the financial oppression bill. Funny how the headlines never mention the Democrats splitting their own party. But they're caving. They're going to compromise with a few Republicans and pass a financial oppression-lite bill. Democrats finally compromised enough that Republicans allowed the bill to come to the Senate floor where they will try to ram it through without any of the changes they promised. Republicans will be very unhappy that Democrats shut them out of the looting just like they did with Obamacare.

Government finally gave permission (we shouldn't have to ask government for permission to do anything) for a wind farm blocked by Ted Kennedy and Walter Cronkite. Why we've empowered these freaks to make us ask permission from them to do things in our interest and the interest of others is insane.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Report that the European central bank will monetize the debt of Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, stealing money from European citizens and holders of the euro through the inflation tax and transferring it to to irresponsible governments and bankers who fund them. If this happens, governments will become even more fiscally irresponsible, setting Europe up for a far worse crash in the near future. Maybe this is a threat to prompt Germany to move forward, but it'll certainly make the irresponsible governments (all governments) even more irresponsible.

Fed to leave interest rates near zero for an extended period. Because it hasn't done enough damage already.

Mises scholars shows that fiat money does indeed have value when government forces people to use it to pay taxes - the value of avoiding being a victim of government violence.

EDUCATION:

Leading leftist school of teachers can't figure out what percentile means. No wonder our kids are failing.

HEALTH CARE:

More people want Obamacare repealed than ever.

"The percentage who support repeal efforts are up 3 percent from the week just after the bill passed, when President Obama made several campaign-style stops in support of the bill."

The more people find out, the more they want it repealed. I also think this is becoming more about Obama personally. Americans are fed up with his policies, his lawlessness, his assault on freedom and individual rights, his divisiveness, his narcissism, and his sanctimonious, arrogant preaching on TV day after day, and they want to take him down. This question about being bad for the country is a meaningless, collectivist question. I know Obamacare is bad for the vast majority of Americans. It will make the price of health insurance and health care go up. I know it's better in a limited context for a small minority of Americans who might get coverage when they didn't have it before. As always, government has divided the country into winners and losers at the point of a gun. But overall, everybody looses because we're all poorer.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Like a spoiled brat who just had his candy taken away, climate fraud Michael Mann sues over "Hide the Decline" parody. This is a publicity stunt. It's going nowhere. Mann knows his analysis can't stand up to critical scrutiny. If he took this to trial, all the climate frauds would be exposed in open court. He doesn't want that. I hope prosecutors put him behind bars though.

"It's the use of his image that Mann is complaining about, arguing that the video supports "efforts to sell various products and merchandise."

"The guy is crazy to threaten legal action," said Jeff Davis, the President of No Cap and Trade, a large organization that includes the group Mann is threatening to sue, Minnesotans for Global Warming. "A lawsuit would give us full discovery -- and there's a lot to look at in his work.""

Like I said. This is going nowhere. These climate frauds have gotten away with their crimes by hiding their data from all attempts by skeptics to see it. Every time their data gets publicized, they're fraud becomes apparent. Mann's been hiding his data and techniques for over a decade. He isn't going to let his data and analysis become public and prove he's a fraud because of this parody.

"When the letter first arrived, they quickly pulled the video from You Tube and their website because they couldn't afford to defend against a lawsuit. But, as word spread of the legal threat to the jokesters, a number of groups, including No Cap and Trade, rallied to their defense. They even backed a newer version of the video titled "Hide the Decline II" and re-posted on You Tube and the No Cap and Trade site."

There you have it. Mann thought he could shut them down with a threat because they had no money and worked out of a trailer. He was wrong. This is going nowhere.


The majority of Americans aren't willing to pay a dime in taxes ostensibly to fight global warming.

POLICE STATE:

Putting mug shots up on the sheriff's web site is an abhorrent policy. Some of these people will be found not-guilty, and nobody will know. Many of them are not guilty, but will be found guilty anyway. Where do you go to get your reputation back? I hope the people found not guilty sue and end up owning that sheriff's department. Of the course the government probably won't let them sue.

FBI agent in charge of raid on the Michigan yahoos they seduced into saying they wanted to blow up some police officers can't remember any details of the investigation as prosecution tries to hold the yahoos without bail. How convenient.

"An FBI agent who led the investigation of nine Michigan militia members charged with trying to launch war against the federal government couldn't recall many details of the two-year probe yesterday during questioning by defense lawyers.

Even the judge who must decide whether to release the nine until trial was puzzled.

"I share the frustrations of the defense team … that she doesn't know anything," U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said after agent Leslie Larsen confessed she hadn't reviewed her notes recently and couldn't remember specific details of the case."

This should be enough to make bail, but...

"But the judge said the agent's appearance was appropriate because the burden is on defense lawyers to show their clients won't be a threat to the public if released."

So much for innocent until proven guilty. It should be up to the prosecution to show why the judge should withhold bail. The judge really wants to rule in favor of the prosecutors, but the defense is making them look stupid. Let's hope the judge does the right thing so these yahoos can be free to participate in their own defense.


Four federal agents and a Pennsylvania state trooper investigate Amish farmer for raw milk sales.

WAR:

The war in Afghanistan has turned Afghanistan and Pakistan into the terrorism capitals of the world. Who wouldn't want American troops dropping bombs on them and increased terrorist bombs killing the too.

POLITICS:

President Obama's personal attacks is another reason he's the most divisive president in our lives.

This answer to the question what made government so big misses the point: continually re-electing Democrats and Republicans year after year even though both expanded the size and scope of government made it this big. If you want to stop the growth in government, you have to vote out the people who grow it. That would be every Republican and Democrat other than Ron Paul.

I've often called Bush the Younger Bush the Democrat. He was a political clone of LBJ, imo. Now his disciple Charlie Christ is proving my point by leaving the Republican party, which is really the party of Democrat-lites, to run as an independent. His goal is to torpedo Republican Mario Rubio who kicked his butt in the primary. Because conservatives always vote Republican no matter what, Republicans are just like Democrats except barely less bad. Democrats always have a leftist fiscal agenda. The Republican fiscal agenda is always to be slightly less bad which means it's leftist too. If Democrats advocate an income tax rate of 50 percent, Republicans will advocate 48 percent. If Democrats advocate a $3.5 trillion budget, Republicans will advocate a $3.3 trillion budget. If Democrats want to spend $500 billion on welfare, Republicans will advocate spending $450 billion. When Democrats pushed Obamacare, the Republican alternative was Obamacare-lite. Democrats are pushing financial oppression, and Republicans are pushing financial oppression-lite. Yet conservatives vote for Republicans every time because Republicans throw them tyrannical social issue bones like welfare for churches, then conservatives have the audacity to claim they support small government.

Democrats have governed so destructively they may lose three symbolic senate seats in addition to losing Kennedy's lifetime seat.

"As things stand now, they are well within striking distance of winning President Obama's old seat in Illinois; Vice President Biden's former perch in Delaware, and toppling Majority Leader Harry M. Reidin Nevada.

"I call them the trophy seats," said Sen. John Cornyn(Tex.), who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Winning all three would affirm a GOPresurgence, and announce -- as Scott Brown did, when he won a January special election for the late Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts -- that Democrats aren't safe anywhere anymore."

As always, the accomplice press wants us to think of this as resurgence of one party, just like they claimed in 2006 and 2008, instead of what it really is: the American people punishing the party in power. It doesn't mean we like Republicans. Both parties suck, and when Republicans get back in power, they're going to harm our country just like they did between 2000 and 2008.

Reminding us what aristocrats think of us common people, UK PM Gordon Brown calls woman a bigot because she disagrees with him on immigration laws. He's mortified he got caught.

MISC:

Like so many explorers before them, Chinese explorers believe they have found the remains of Noah's arc on Mount Ararat. At least the wood has been dated as 4,800 years old.

Boortz finally admits what I've long suspected:

"No --- I'm not for unfettered free markets."

His comment about fraud is a strawman. Fraud would be a crime in an unfettered free market. Fraud is stealing.

"When you make a misrepresentation of fact to some individual with a goal of causing that individual to act against their own self-interest, that would be fraud."

That's what every politician does every day. We should punish fraud in the political economy the same as in the private economy.


Keynes the fascist.

Santa Clara County bans toys in fast food kid's meals.

"This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children's love of toys' to sell high-calorie, unhealthful food, said Supervisor Ken Yeager, who sponsored the measure."

I don't advocate violence, but as a figure of speech, I would like to drag all our aristocrats into an ally and smack the piss out of them and tell them to leave us the hell alone.

The US Chamber of Commerce hates Ron Paul because it wants government to favor big businesses at the expense of everybody else. That's because it's funded by bigger businesses. Big businesses do not want to compete in a free market.

Antioxidant primer.

Garet Garrett shares my observation that the US isn't an empire  - we're stupider than an empire.

"As Garet Garrett, the Jeremiah of the old “isolationist” right, put it: the American empire is unique in human history in that “everything goes out, and nothing comes in.”"

Traditionally, the leaders of empires looted the foreign lands they conquered so they didn't have to loot their own people so much. America invades foreign countries then loots Americans and transfers the wealth to the foreign countries. We call that compassion when it should be considered stupidity at best and insanity at worst.

Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Senators send not-so-veiled threat to Facebook telling it to change new policy. They have no reason to get involved. Facebook users are capable of dealing with this on their own, and they were. This is just aristocrats taking advantage of the situation so they can call for regulating the internet. Even if Facebook refused to change the policy, a competitor could take advantage by applying a policy the disgruntled Facebook users preferred.

ECONOMY:

Show-boating senators scapegoat Goldman-Sachs for inflating the housing bubble. I wasn't aware that Goldman had a printing press. That's what it takes to inflate a bubble out of nothing, and I thought only the Federal Reserve had one.

""Goldman's actions demonstrate that it often saw its clients not as valuable customers but as objects for profits," said Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "Its conduct brings into question the whole function of Wall Street," Levin said."

So senators think they sit in judgment of the function of Wall Street. Like the private sector only exists at their pleasure. Unfortunately, they're right. And we made it that way by voting for these tyrannical freaks.

Because we taught them poorly, surrendering our responsibility for their education to government, and because we empowered big-government Republicans and Democrats to rob us blind and bury us in debt, Generation Y

"is the first in a century that is unlikely to end up better off financially than their parents, the Demos report said."

I hope everybody feels good about these consequences of our actions. But it doesn't have to be that way. If we wake up and take responsibility for our lives by ousting the Democrats and Republicans we empowered to do this to us, dramatically reduce the size and scope of government at every level, we will suffer a short, sharp economic contraction then our economy will rebound stronger than ever before. Ron Paul is the only national politician with the agenda that can fix our problems.

TAX AND SPEND:

Standard & Poors downgrades Greek bonds to junk status. The Greek government will pressure the US government to force S&P to change this. I wonder if the feds will cave. It also downgraded Portugal's, but not as much. I bet this hurts the entire bond market. It's also going to make the Greek government bailout plan less popular. The Greek government might yet default, and that would be the best thing for everybody because the pain would be short term and less severe than it would be otherwise, and it would shock more people around the world into fiscal sanity.

73 percent of economists surveyed say Obama's stimulus boondoggles didn't affect jobs.

Obama's empanels bipartisan panel of looters to provide political cover for tax hikes. Remember, bipartisan means both parties unite to rob us blind. Look for token spending cuts that your kids couldn't use for lunch money to be hailed as great heroism and sacrifice.

Chile's center-right government is raising taxes for social engineering, using the recent earthquake as an excuse. Chile has made tremendous economic gains over the last couple of decades because Chileans embraced economic freedom. It looks like this government wants to take the country backward.

REGULATION:

If I have to suffer through unconstitutional central planning, I like this idea. If companies ask for a bailout, fire the executives. Companies will be a lot less likely to ask for bailouts. Boards would have to force it over executives. The claw-back provision would be an ex post facto law so it's extra unconstitutional.

National Review's case against the Dodd bill.

Democrats schedule another cloture vote on the Dodd bill today even though nothing has changed.

"Democrats’ appear to be trying to force multiple votes – another is likely for tomorrow, if the one today fails – to continue pounding their theme that Republicans are in league with Wall Street bank executives."

Talk about playing politics. I still think they would be better off politically with a minimal compromise that would bring one or more Republicans on board and win a victory than continuing to embrace defeat for the purpose of demagoguery. Republicans are begging to compromise, but Democrats won't allow it. These Democrat leaders are fanatical leftists, blind to political reality, and they're taking us collectively down in flames.

Democrats are making bailouts a permanent entitlement while pretending to put an end to them.

"Dodd's bill not only fails to get rid of bailouts, it makes them a permanent entitlement.

Big Wall Street banks will now be able to tap into a slush fund anytime they fall on their faces. The fund will include $50 billion of taxpayer money and then will be maintained with taxes from larger banks. It sounds eerily similar to the way unemployment benefits function for individuals."

All you have to remember is that the Wall Street firms support this legislation.

Since Fannie and Freddie are socialized, Congress won't regulate them. Because there's never a problem with socialism.

Shutting down payday lenders means poor people in need of cash fast will have to resort to the black market. We know how that's going to turn out. This bill is the consequence of banksters using the government's gun to force more Americans to do business with them. It will also pressure many Americans who dropped out of the system to come back in where they can be better tracked and taxed, so it's a double-win for the aristocrats. The needs of the people be damned.

"We will probably never hear about the poor who couldn't pay the monthly rent or feed their starving children for days because they could not secure a loan. This is a perfect example of the "unseen" effects of government intervention in the economy, which Frederic Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt so brilliantly demonstrated."

Sure we will, but not in this context. They'll be used as examples to expand welfare. And we'll also hear about the ones beaten by loan sharks, but again, not in this context.

"Firms can use one of two means to secure market share: they can use (to utilize Franz Oppenheimer's terminology) the economic means, whereupon they gain market share and the consumer's dollar vote by catering in the most expedient and efficient way to the most urgent desires of the consumers, or the political means, whereupon they call on the state to regulate commerce in such a way as to give them an ability to reap a monopoly profits at the distinct disadvantage of consumers."

Exactly - the private economy or the political economy.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

I can't help but wonder if these claims that debt isn't a problem is a hoax.

HEALTH CARE:

Here come the price controls...

"Some 27 states currently have some form of rate review in the individual and small-business markets, but they generally don't leverage it in a political way because insolvent insurers are expensive for states and bankruptcies limit consumer choices. One exception is Massachusetts: Governor Deval Patrick is now using this regulatory power to create de facto price controls and assail the state's insurers as cover for the explosive costs resulting from the ObamaCare prototype the Bay State passed in 2006.

National Democrats now want the power to do the same across the country, because they know how unrealistic their cost-control claims really are. Democrats are petrified they'll get the blame they deserve when insurance costs inevitably spike. So the purpose of this latest Senate bill is to have a pre-emptive political response on hand.

...

"Although several provisions would help to reduce health care cost growth, their impact would be more than offset through 2019 by the higher health expenditures resulting from the coverage expansions," Mr. Foster writes—and that's assuming everything goes according to plan. He considers it "plausible and even probable" that prices in the private market will rise as greater demand due to subsidized coverage runs into the relatively fixed supply of doctors and hospitals."

Who would have thought? Oh, wait. Everybody knew this. They passed it anyway. You cannot repeal the laws of economics any more than you can repeal other laws of nature. Like night follows day, price controls always lead to shortages. Shortages always lead to rationing.

"The official who will preside over this fiscal trainwreck ... added that "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.""

I'm telling you, younger generations will spit on our graves for what we did to them.

Obamacare is going to harm health care businesses, and the result will be higher prices, layoffs, bankruptcies and lower quality goods and services.

"Pyott started our discussion by saying the health care bill was "laudable" because "32 million more people will have access to health care." "

Unfortunately, when a CEO starts off bogus statement like this, I know he's play politics, not being honest.

Congressman reported tells a group of doctors that their income will be cut by 40 percent because of Obamacare. I find this report hard to believe. Not the cut income part, but the part about a congressman informing doctors of that.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Obama's assistant energy secretary has big investments in companies that will profit from Obama's green policies. Gore will profit big-time too. Imagine that.

"Zoi, who left her position as CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection — founded by Al Gore — to serve as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, now manages billions in “green jobs” funding. But the disclosure documents show that Zoi not only is in a position to affect the fortunes of her previous employer, ex-Vice President Al Gore, but that she herself has large holdings in two firms that could directly profit from policies proposed by the Department of Energy."

In other words, these companies can't make big profits on their own, but if government uses violence to transfer our wealth to them, members of his administration will make a fortune. That's the nature of government. Bush and Cheney did the same thing with the Iraq war.

"In a rare moment of candor, Obama “Energy Czar” Carol Browner said to US News & World Report last year: “We need to make sure that …[e]ventually, we can get to a system where an electric company will be able [sic] to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air conditioner won’t operate at its peak, you’ll still be able to cool your house, but that’ll be a savings to the consumer.” (emphasis added)"

Are you looking forward to the day when the government-controlled electric company decides how comfortable your home will be? Me too. I have no interest in this smart-grid they're pushing.


The supposed scoop on why Graham pulled out of the tax and trade bill - anger at cynical election year politics by Harry Reid. Pot, meet kettle. If that was a reason to pull out of anything, it would be a reason to pull out of everything. It is interesting that Reid, Obama and other Democrats feel they can win political points by failing to pass amnesty, just like they felt they could win political points by failing to open debate on financial oppression yesterday.


POLICE STATE:


British unleashing unmanned drones on civilian population. Smile, you're on police camera 24/7/365.


More on the British police state.

"[Bond] found that the UK, once a bastion of freedom and civil liberties, is now one of the most advanced surveillance societies in the world, ranked third after Russia and China. The average UK adult is now registered on more than 700 databases and is caught many times each day by nearly five million CCTV cameras. Increasingly monitored, citizens are being turned into suspects. Within 100 yards of Bond’s home, he discovered, there were no fewer than 200 cameras.

Before going on the run, he made 80 formal requests to government and commercial organisations for the information they held on him. He piled the replies on his floor, appalled by the level of detail. The owners of the databases knew who his friends were, which websites he’d been looking at, and where he had driven his car. One commercial organisation was even able to inform him that, on a particular day in November 2006, he had “sounded angry”. It was more than he knew himself."

Coming to America as I write. What do you think the result of this crime wave in Chicago, the most oppressive city in America, will be? Government creates crime. Every law passed creates crime. Because we have so many laws that no individual can grasp, every American is a criminal. Violence is the inevitable result. The solution is the dramatically reduce the size and scope of government.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

It turns out the demonstrations against Arizona's new "show me your papers law" were violent. Did you see any news about that? Of course not. Peaceful tea partiers are to be slandered as violent, and the violence of leftists is to be covered up.

But Boortz's support of this law shows he doesn't understand the nature of government or that power corrupts. Like night follows day, this law will lead to cops demanding to see ID from American citizens, the American citizens getting angry, and more cop beatings will follow.

Mexico issues travel warning over Arizona law. They should. Any Mexican visiting Arizona is in for a hard time.

Obviously Americans of Hispanic descent and legal aliens will be abused the most by Arizona's cops under this new law, but we shouldn't just focus on the minority. Cops will use this law to abuse anybody of any ethnicity they want whenever they feel like it. Abuse by police is institutionalized by a justice system in which cops, prosecutors, judges and juries almost invariably allow police abuse to go unpunished and generally reward it. Just like blacks hurt their cause by focusing only on police brutality and misconduct against blacks instead of  in general, focusing this on Hispanics hurts the cause too.

POLITICS:

Republican incumbent senator in trouble in Utah. Good.

Instead of using it to pay down the federal debt they ran up while in office, retiring Senators Voinovich and Bunning are spending their campaign war chests on bacchanalian orgies for their staffs and other candidates. It's good to be the king. I have a good campaign financing proposal - 90 percent of all campaign finances raised by incumbents must be used to pay down federal debt if any exists at the time of the contribution.

MISC:

Hitler parody videos disappearing from YouTube. This is going to cause a competing site to rise. Maybe Pirate Bay will start one.

Who says older people didn't have a drug problem when they were kids: drugged by my parents. Pretty funny.

Lessons to be learned from the free software model. Too bad some are trapped in the past.

Thomas Sowell on misusing history.

"Slavery is a classic example. The history of slavery across the centuries and in many countries around the world is a painful history to read — not only in terms of how slaves have been treated, but because of what that says about the whole human species — because slaves and enslavers alike have been of every race, religion, and nationality.

If the history of slavery ought to teach us anything, it is that human beings cannot be trusted with unbridled power over other human beings — no matter what color or creed any of them are. The history of ancient despotism and modern totalitarianism practically shouts that same message from the blood-stained pages of history."

Amen.

"The inhumanity of human beings toward other human beings is not a new story, much less a local story. There is no need to hide it, because there are lessons we can learn from it. But there is also no need to distort it, so that sins of the whole human species around the world are presented as special defects of “our society” or the sins of a particular race.

If American society and Western civilization are different from other societies and civilizations, it is in that they eventually turned against slavery, and stamped it out, at a time when non-Western societies around the world were still maintaining slavery and resisting Western pressures to end slavery — including, in some cases, by armed resistance."

Hallelujah.

"Those who mine history for sins are not searching for truth but for opportunities to denigrate their own society, or for grievances that can be cashed in today at the expense of people who were not even born when the sins of the past were committed.

An ancient adage says: “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” But apparently it is not sufficient for many among our educators, the intelligentsia, or the media. They are busy poisoning the present by the way they present the past."

God bless Thomas Sowell.

During election campaigns, high profile people always say they're going to leave the country if so-and-so gets elected. They never do. But Obama really is driving people to give up citizenship and leave the country. Atlas is shrugging, and this is just the beginning. Pretty soon people will be asking foreign countries for asylum from our predatory government.

The issue of the Justice Department quashing the investigation into election law and civil rights violations by the two black panthers in Philadelphia won't go away.

A lesson for the US from Roman history.

A lesson for environmentalists from Indians.