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great villain in the deregulation myth is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1999, which repealed some restrictions of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, namely those preventing bank holding companies from owning other kinds of financial firms.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.