Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Government rewriting the history of the economic crisis:

"In recent comments to the Council of Institutional Investors, Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin's prepared remarks examined at length the causes of the collapse without mentioning the Federal Reserve system once. Nor did he mention Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. He did blame AIG, Enron, and the "opaque, unregulated market we have today[.]" The suggestion that the financial markets are unregulated will be news to anyone who has worked in the financial sector, but what we are seeing again and again is a public relations machine that has been dispatched to make it clear that the Federal government and its quasi-government monopolies will be relegated to the background as but marginal players in the system, or even as victims."

What else would you expect?

"Bernanke also claims to this day that the Fed was doing its best to head off the crisis in spite of the fact that, at least until 2007, if not later, Bernanke repeatedly denied the existence of a housing bubble at all, while denying that a housing bust would have any substantial impact on the economy."

Bernanke is an accomplished politician - i.e. a consummate liar.

"Before they finally admitted insolvency and entered a state of conservatorship in 2008, the GSEs had long maintained that they were private institutions.  Yet, the fact that they were exempted from state and local regulations and taxation while wielding massive influence on Capitol Hill, and the fact that everyone simply accepted that the GSEs would be bailed out in case of failure, ensured that Fannie and Freddie would always have ready access to the capital necessary to keep buying up a nearly limitless supply of securitized loans that, in many cases, few others were willing to purchase."

OK, so the GSEs were really fascist companies at the time, but they're socialist companies now. That's how the failures of fascism lead to full-blown socialism.

"The stakes are enormously high in the present rhetorical battle. Just as it was essential for Roosevelt and the Keynesians to convince the public that the Great Depression was caused by an unfettered free market, it is equally true that the Federal government must now avoid a situation in which the public actually recognizes the widespread and central role of the Federal Government in the present collapse.  The talking points center on transparency and risk management, yet no organization in recent decades has created more moral hazard and provided less transparency than the Federal Reserve. The official spokesmen decry securitization and low-quality loans, yet the bloated secondary market and its securitized loans are the product of decades of Federal subsidization of the housing market through the GSEs and the Fed."

This is why the internet is so important. Without the internet, they would be able to whitewash government's responsibility for creating this crisis. It's why Roosevelt created the FCC. It's why politicians today are trying to seize control of the internet.

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Appeals court rules that the University of Colorado has no authority to bar students and visitors from carrying firearms. That's great news.

TAX AND SPEND:

So this critic understands the obvious attraction of the FairTax:

"The reason for such a radical tax-reform proposal is obvious: the intrusive, wealth-destroying, income redistributing, social engineering monstrosity known as the U.S. tax code. With its progressive brackets that punish success, refundable tax credits that allow some Americans to receive a refund after paying no taxes, and arcane rules and schedules that confound not only seasoned tax preparers, but IRS employees, the tax code in the 20 volumes of Title 26, "Internal Revenue," of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations is an abomination.

The appeal of the FairTax should be evident as well: no more record keeping, no more taxes withheld from paychecks, no more compliance costs, no more tax forms, no more IRS audits of individuals, no more lines at the post office on April 15^th."

But he's still a critic, probably because he's wrong about this:

"Obviously, it is much easier to sell a national sales tax to the American people if the rate is 23 percent instead of 30 percent. But whether one thinks the rate is 23 or 30 percent, the fact remains that it will cost Americans an extra 30 cents on the dollar to purchase any new good or service under the FairTax."

This is just wrong. We already pay 22 percent inclusive more on average for everything we buy because of the embedded income tax, payroll tax, and other federal taxes that the FairTax will replace. So the cost of items will go up one percent on average. If wages don't fall to take-home levels (and they won't because workers won't give up their salaries), the price will rise a little more. The FairTax is not an additional tax on goods and serves. It's a replacement tax on them. Worse yet, after he makes this claim, he then clarifies what I said above, but he discounts how reduction in price we'll realize by removing the embedded taxes. And in his conclusion, he's wrong again:

"It's time to retire the FairTax. Although on the surface it sounds like a workable solution to the problem that is the U.S. tax code, it promises a utopia that it cannot deliver. The FairTax creates new taxes, new taxpayers, and new tax collectors, makes it easier for the federal government to raise taxes, institutes universal welfare with its prebate check, has unknown and potential huge transition costs, could saddle us with a sales tax and a reconstituted income tax, and has a stated rate that is too low to achieve revenue neutrality, a problematic concept in itself."

The FairTax legislation requires the repeal of the 16th amendment before it goes into effect, so it can't be implemented with an income tax. The transition costs are the cost of reprogramming cash registers, and since the FairTax collects from 1000 times fewer payers, it will be tiny compared to even one year of compliance costs with the income tax. The FairTax makes it harder for the government to raise taxes because the tax will be explicitly listed on every receipt consumers receive - it won't be hidden in withholdings like the income and payroll taxes. The prebate is the most worst part of the FairTax, it does smell like a welfare check, but it would have no chance of passing without it and government sends out welfare checks already anyway. Government will pervert the FairTax for political reasons over time as it perverts all taxes, but it's still superior to what we have now. And of course, the FairTax is a tax - it takes money from people by force - and that's always immoral and corrupt. But it's a tremendous improvement over our current tax system and could be a powerful tool for a libertarian to use to get elected with a promise to take the FairTax rate down to zero and abolish federal taxes as he dramatically cuts spending. I wasn't aware that college tuition was exempted. That should be changed.


HEALTH CARE:

Government's war on obesity, a problem greatly exacerbated by food subsidies and the FDA, is really a maneuver to make Americans lifetime customers of Big Pharma.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Lew Rockwell's anti-environmentalist manifesto.

WAR:

What's been the consequences of nearly nine years of war in Afghanistan?

"In 2009, Transparency International ranked Afghanistan as the world's second most corrupt nation, just a notch below Somalia."

Corruption is the US government specialty.

"As opium production soared from 185 tons in 2001 to 8,200 tons just six years later – a remarkable 53% of the country's entire economy – drug corruption metastasized, reaching provincial governors, the police, cabinet ministers, and the president's own brother, also his close adviser. Indeed, as a senior U.S. antinarcotics official assigned to Afghanistan described the situation in 2006, "Narco corruption went to the very top of the Afghan government."  Earlier this year, the U.N. estimated that ordinary Afghans spend $2.5 billion annually, a quarter of the country's gross domestic product, simply to bribe the police and government officials.  "

Narco corruption goes to the very top of the US government, so why would we expect it to be any different in Afghanistan?

"Last August's presidential elections were an apt index of the country's progress. Karzai's campaign team, the so-called warlord ticket, included Abdul Dostum, an Uzbek warlord who slaughtered countless prisoners in 2001; vice presidential candidate Muhammed Fahim, a former defense minister linked to drugs and human rights abuses; Sher Muhammed Akhundzada, the former governor of Helmand Province, who was caught with nine tons of drugs in his compound back in 2005; and the president's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, reputedly the reigning drug lord and family fixer in Kandahar. "The Karzai family has opium and blood on their hands," one Western intelligence official told the New York Times during the campaign."

Sounds like Obama's cabinet and the Chicago machine.


Comparing Predator strikes to Ender's Game.


How we continue to confuse voting with freedom, and export it with violence.

"For the time being, Baghdad's government has been in abeyance. The Sunni militias, reportedly backed by al‑Qaida, have returned to the streets, and the death rate is again soaring. Kurdistan is all but a separate country, and the odds are on the Sunnis being forced back into a semi-autonomous region. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died and millions been driven from their homes – including almost all Iraq's ancient population of Christians. The import of democracy has so far just inflamed local tension and fuelled fundamentalism. Like precious porcelain, elections were exported without instructions on their care. In the absence of adequate security, they are little more than tribal plebiscites."

... 

"In Afghanistan, a similar saga has been running for nine years, and is growing ever more tragic. Last year saw the deaths of more Afghans (2,412) and more western troops (520) than since the 2001 invasion. Nato is locked in a struggle to hold Helmand province for the government of the president, Hamid Karzai, against insurgents who can wait as long as they like to defeat the hated invaders.

Nato is only now seeking control, nine years on, of the country's second city of Kandahar, in which the Taliban is dominant and the president's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is the power broker. Karzai is said to have told local elders that there will be no assault on Kandahar "without their permission". If Nato cannot negotiate a deal over the city, rather than reduce it to rubble, its mission is surely doomed."

... 

"Democracy in both America and Britain is coming under scrutiny these days. Quite apart from the antics of MPs and congressmen, it is said to be sliding towards oligarchy, with increasing overtones of autocracy. Money and its power over technology are making elections unfair. The military-industrial complex is as powerful as ever, having adopted "the menace of global terrorism" as its casus belli. Lobbying and corruption are polluting the government process. In a nutshell, democracy is not in good shape.

How strange to choose this moment to export it, least of all to countries that have never experienced it in their history. The west not only exports the stuff, it does so with massive, thuggish violence, the antithesis of how self-government should mature in any polity. The tortured justification in Iraq and Afghanistan is that elections will somehow sanctify a "war against terrorism" waged on someone else's soil. The resulting death and destruction have been appalling. Never can an end, however noble, have so failed to justify the means of achieving it."

How's democracy - mob rule - working out for you?


Terrorists regularly use drug sales to fund their operations because they were taught to do so by the CIA in order to fight communism.

"Thus it is not surprising that the U.S. Government, following the lead of the CIA, has over the years become a protector of drug traffickers against criminal prosecution in this country. For example both the FBI and CIA intervened in 1981 to block the indictment (on stolen car charges) of the drug-trafficking Mexican intelligence czar Miguel Nazar Haro, claiming that Nazar was “an essential repeat essential contact for CIA station in Mexico City,” on matters of “terrorism, intelligence, and counterintelligence.” When Associate Attorney General Lowell Jensen refused to proceed with Nazar’s indictment, the San Diego U.S. Attorney, William Kennedy, publicly exposed his intervention. For this he was promptly fired."

Like I said, drug corruption goes to the top of the US government, so why should we expect anything different in Afghanistan?


POLITICS:


Obama's corruption is SOP in politics.


MISC:


I've never bought into these dark matter and dark energy theories. They sound more like magic than science to me. This guy proposes that including electromagnetic forces into cosmological analysis in an Electrical Universe model would explain the problems with the gravity only theories.

"But the commitment to a gravity-only model had become so ingrained that the response, instead of a willingness to re-examine the theory, has been to postulate the presence of invisible "dark matter" to make up the difference – later extended to the notion of "dark energy" to account for enormous forces evidently at work that the observed amount of matter can't account for. Things have now reached the bizarre point where, according to the prevailing belief system, no less than 96 percent of the universe has to be there in forms unseen in order to explain the behavior of the 4 percent that is seen.

Inventing unobservables to explain away failed predictions is almost always the sign of a theory that's in trouble. Over 99 percent of the observed universe exists in the form of "plasma" – a gas-like state of matter consisting all or in part of charged particles that respond to electrical and magnetic forces, which are immensely more powerful than gravity. An alternative view, known as the Electric Universe model, is emerging that recognizes the vital role played by electricity, and is able to interpret, and in many cases predict, cosmological phenomena in terms of principles that are well understood and can be demonstrated in electrical and plasma laboratories. It deals purely in tangibles and the universe that we see, without recourse to any of the speculative abstractions that the conventional model has been forced to resort to when new observations failed to match expectations, or were never anticipated in the first place."

Let's see if it accurately predicts what we measure. Can it explain the orbital anomalies of galaxies and the Voyager spacecraft?

Seven sins leading to the US collapse.