Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

The Government Accountability Office reports that Post Office has an unsustainable business model because of unions. The GAO must not have gotten the memo that it's supposed to support the big-government, union agenda. Don't be surprised to see somebody in the GAO fired.

FASCISM:

Obama pressures CEOs of financial firms to stop lobbying against his financial reform deal. I'm sure this meeting went a lot like a meeting of low-level punks with Don Corleone. These firms plunder billions from Americans each year because government rigs the market in their favor, and Obama can threaten to change that. He's already ousted the CEO of GM, so I'm sure he threatened that too.

TAX AND SPEND:

People who save recognize their savings is a target for seizure by government.

On the House floor, Mike Pence literally laughs at Democrats' claims to have cut taxes. Good for him. That joke should be exposed.

Government is getting closer and closer to subsidizing newspapers.

Informative breakdown of how much our money government is spending. Ouch.

REGULATION:

Another example of how government always and inevitably politicizes regulations to favor politically connected (i.e. the biggest companies who pay the most tribute to their politicians) to the detriment of smaller companies and consumers. This is because in one way politicians are just like the rest of us - they're out to advance their own careers. Because of the nature of government, that means selling our power and our money to the highest bidder.

HEALTH CARE:

Remember when Henry Waxman loudly and publicly demanded that CEO who took charges because of the new taxes from Obamacare testify in front of him? Now he's quietly and non-publicly admitted the companies were just following the law and dropped his demands. Funny how that's not reported.

A list of new, Obamacare taxes.

John Boehner promises to repeal Obamacare if Republicans regain control of Congress in 2010. Maybe Boehner forgot Obama would still be president then, and it would take two-thirds majorities to override a veto. Or maybe he just thinks voters are fools like the rest of the politicians. Here's a hint of the reality:

"Members of the House GOPhave faced some internal riftsover the extent to which they would repeal the bill if they took control of Congress in the fall. 

For instance, some centrist Republican candidates for higher office, like Reps. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Mike Castle (R-Del.), who are running for Senate in their respective states, have faced some pressure for having to walk a political tightrope between calling for a full or partial repeal of the new law."

Republicans will not repeal Obamacare. All you conservatives who think they will are fooling yourselves. They'll just modify it to share in the looting.

Short history of medical care in the US shows why free market medical care arose, how the powerful doctor's guild fought it and eventually started down the 100 year path to Obamacare.

"Even though they were only about 13% of physicians in practice,[8] eclectics and homeopaths did damage to the incomes of the allopaths. The allopaths began organizing at the state level to use the coercive power of government to not only severely restrict (if not outright ban) eclectics and homeopaths, and the schools that trained them, but also restrict the number of allopaths in practice to dramatically increase their incomes and prestige.[9]"

This is the universal path of government. Politicians are always looking for somebody to sell power to in order to advance their own careers, and they pass laws to loot the people on behalf of the special interests that pay them the most.

POLICE STATE:

I haven't read anything about this Tonya Craft trial except the couple of short comments on LRC, but the behavior reported here is seriously twisted. It sounds frighteningly similar to a trial we had.

WAR:

Open letter from two Iraq war veterans who patrolled in the neighborhood where the video of the Apache crew killing Iraqi civilians and reporters was shot apologizes for bringing destruction to Iraq and death to the Iraqi people.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Iranian President Ahmadinejad makes a laughingstock out of Obama's nuclear disarmament summit by calling for the US to disarm first, and it files a formal complaint with the UN over US's nuclear blackmail. Ahmadinejad has made both Bush and Obama look like the fools they are.

Obama and Medvedev's nuclear arms reduction. Ralph Peters on the deal.

Sec. of Defense Gates says the US lacks a strategy to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And I think this sounds likely:

"Among his concerns, Gates included the lack of a response should Iran choose the course that many officials and analysts consider likely -- assembling all the major parts needed for a nuclear weapon, such as fuel, designs and detonators, but stopping just short of assembling a fully operational weapon."

How do you stop that? It's one thing to say we won't let a country develop a nuclear weapon. It's another to say we won't let it develop components that have other applications.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

I have no problem with Arizona making it illegal for immigrants to be in Arizona without documentation showing they are in the US legally. I have a big problem with allowing cops to demand the papers of anybody they suspect of being illegal. We know what cops will do with that power. Any Hispanic-American or Hispanic immigrant in Arizona is going to be stopped by a cop who will demand his papers. It'll be a Nazi-style "papers please" environment. This is going to backfire and build sentiment for illegal aliens.

POLITICS:

People are so fed up with incumbent politicians (what took them so long?) that city elects dead man to oust incumbent mayor.

I've been impressed with the resistance the tea partiers have put up against Republicans, but the Republicans are relentless, and they're making more and more inroads as the Democrats do more damage and the election nears. It's scary that as bad as Republicans were for eight years, Democrats are significantly worse, but we can't keep voting for the lesser of two tremendous evils.

How both Republicans and Democrats grossly misread the electorate and drove them to seek libertarian solutions. They would have understood the electorate if they had been reading this blog. I've yet to read another person who expresses what  I always claimed: the great mainstream of America is libertarian at heart, and Americans would overwhelmingly embrace a libertarian if they had the opportunity at election time. That was the lesson Republicans should have learned from Ronald Reagan. But we have to do a lot better than Reagan. Modifying the income tax code and slowing government growth isn't enough. We need to dramatically reduce the size and scope of government and abolish taxes so the American people can fully realize the wonders of freedom.

"After Barack Obama's election, Democrats assumed that the American people were battered, bruised and ready for a morphine drip of European-style socialism. Republicans, shocked by their stunning reversals, figured the Democrats were right and started looking for technocrats of their own.

And in a political system fueled by special-interest money, it was hard for the leaders of major parties to imagine anything other than an activist government. After all, if you pay for someone to get elected, you don't expect him to just sit there.

Just 18 months ago the leaders of both parties were quite sure that Obama would be the popular, transformative president he aspires to be. The Republicans who emerged from the wreckage of November were certain to look a lot more like Charlie Crist and Mitt Romney than Marco Rubio and Ron Paul.

But Crist's embrace of Obamanomics seems to have utterly destroyed his chances at a Senate seat that was once his for the taking. Romney, considered a near lock for the 2012 Republican nomination, has seen his candidacy badly damaged by a populist revolt against the passage of a national health care plan that looks like the one he designed for Massachusetts.

Obama, who said that passage of his health plan proved that Washington could still do big things, finds himself deeply at odds with an electorate that is not confident of government's ability to do anything at all.

His election has turned out to be not the result of a national lurch toward government intervention but his own skill at disguising his policies, the failures of the Republican Party and the bursting of the lending bubble."

Turned out? That was obvious at the time.

52 percent of tea partiers say their income taxes are fair. So much for principle. I wish for the days when Americans would resist pennies of tax.

Bill Clinton compares anti-government people to Timothy McVeigh. But in one way, he's right. Fascism prompts political violence, and our fascist transformation is occurring faster than ever. The problem isn't the anti-government people. The problem is the government.

Obama admits he's trying to implement mob rule in America - government where 51 percent of the people loot the other 49 percent until there's nothing left.

MISC:

Mises scholar describes how government has created a system of non-expert experts.

"Educational credentials are generally a stepping-stone towards government commissions; these pieces of paper confer authority upon the possessor, which in the eyes of the state and its supporters equal expertise. Some government commissions are election-based: the president, members of Congress, etc.; the overwhelming majority of commissions are beholden to the bureaucracy itself, technically originating from the president in communion with the Senate, but in practice arising from self-selected interest groups. These groups function much like medieval guilds in that they are effectively mini-states that rely on credentialism to restrict competition or challenges to their so-called expertise over a given trade."

Great analysis.

Good point about the mine tragedy. If the company had been putting profits first in a free market, it would have insured its mine was safe. Having a mine accident kill workers is not profitable. More likely the company was entwined with government to profit from the point of the government's gun, causing it to neglect mine safety.

This is a great animation explaining that copying is not theft.

The US Constitution and money.

Libertarian praise for Pat Buchanan.

"Buchanan’s books are not all created equal; e.g., see David Gordon’s review of A Republic, Not an Empire and The Death of the West. There is one book, however, that is not only Buchanan’s best and most important book; it is one of the best and most important books ever written. I am referring to his latest book on World War II: Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World.

Now, I realize that my lofty assessment of Buchanan’s book might be dismissed as a hyperbolic exaggeration on steroids. But as one who is a student of war and foreign policy, and writes extensively about war-related issues, and especially on the folly of war, I, having read the book very, very carefully, cannot, must not, say otherwise. I don’t recall ever having highlighted, dog-eared, written in, read, and reread any book like I have this one.

Since the book came out last year, and has been reviewed – positively (The American Conservative), negatively (The Jerusalem Post), and savagely (Newsweek) – many times already, I am forgoing a formal review. I knew when the book came out last year that it was something I would have to read and write about, but it was only after going through the book for myself that I realized just what a monumental thing it was that Pat Buchanan had done.

This book is so important, so crucial to the cause of peace, because World War II, more than any other war in the history of the world, is considered to be, not only necessary, but just, right, and good. Indeed, World War II is known as the "Good War."

But if this is true then we have a problem, for, as Buchanan writes in his introduction: "It was the war begun in September 1939 that led to the slaughter of the Jews and tens of millions of Christians, the devastation of Europe, Stalinization of half the continent, the fall of China to Maoist madness, and half a century of Cold War." How can a war that resulted in the deaths of 50 to 70 million people be termed a good war? How can a war in which two-thirds of those who died were civilians be termed a good war?"

That's the question I asked about the Civil War that made me doubt the legend of Lincoln long before I discovered some answers at mises.org.

Study discovers that handling cash suppresses pain better than aspirin or ibuprofen, but the researchers make the assumption that good feelings make the difference. Maybe they haven't heard about all the cocaine on cash.

I guess I failed as a man because I don't know how to make these five classic drinks, but I do know these five tips for getting a drink in a busy bar, so that should be worth something.

YouTube videos teach Austrian economics.

Another fantastic clip from Milton Friedman where he explains to a young liberal that government creates poverty and unemployment. A libertarian presidential candidate could just run this clip everywhere he went and not talk and win the election in a landslide.

In 1991, Secretary of State Baker threatened to topple Saddam if he used WMD against US forces.