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.