Obama Agenda Rejected in Early Polls

Obama Agenda Rejected in Early Polls

by Mark Luedtke

Starting in earnest last summer, when Democrats first tried to force Obamacare down our throats, the American people overwhelmingly rejected President Obama's agenda. They made it clear at rallies and townhalls, through Congress's email and phone systems, and with letters to the editor that they didn't want any more bailouts. They used every opportunity to communicate they didn't want government to seize more control over their health care, they didn't want new, oppressive taxes in any form including cap and trade, and they wanted fiscal sanity from our government. In response, Obama poked a stick in the people's eye, dramatically increasing spending and doubling the national debt in just one year. Democrats passed cap and trade in the House, introduced it in the Senate, and forced Obamacare on us using parliamentary tricks. Obama empaneled a bipartisan debt commission that's a stalking horse for a European-style value-added tax that, if passed, will put the final nail in America's coffin.

Better late than never, the American people are livid, and they're taking their revenge at the polls every chance they get. First, they elected Republican Chris Christie as governor to make dramatic spending cuts in Democrat dominated New Jersey, and Republican Bob McDonnell easily won the governor's office in Virginia. Next, the people of ultra-liberal Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown to replace Edward Kennedy in the Senate. Obama campaigned for the Democrat in all three of these races and lost.

This anger isn't limited to conservatives. Fourteen term Democrat Congressman Alan Mollohan was defeated in his West Virginia primary. The Obama agenda is so despised that liberals are firing incumbent Democrats in primaries.

A prominent scientist and global warming skeptic won the Republican primary in liberal Oregon. Small-government conservative Rand Paul, son of libertarian champion Ron Paul, won a landslide victory against the Republican establishment candidate for senator in Kentucky despite the endorsements of Senate Minority Leader and fellow Kentuckian Mitch McConnell, and Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani and Rick Santorum. Pennsylvania Democrats had tried to defeat Arlen Specter for 30 years. Showing how out of touch he was with the people after 30 years partying in Rome, Specter served them his own head on a silver platter by switching parties and seemed surprised when they fired him. Having campaigned for Specter, Obama is now 0 for 4. He's the kiss of death. In the one race Democrats point to as a success, a Democrat barely won a western Pennsylvania congressional special election in a district with twice as many Democrats as Republicans by running against Obamacare and cap and trade while supporting gun rights and lower taxes.

Voters in Utah sent the most encouraging signal in decades when they ousted Republican incumbent Senator Robert Bennett. Jonah Goldberg calls Bennett "reliably conservative" which means he reliably votes for bigger budgets, more welfare, more warfare and more debt year after year. With supposed friends like this, who needs enemies? He voted for TARP and supported a Republican version of Obamacare. This earned him the respect of his fellow Washington aristocrats of both parties and liberals in general. Thank goodness the people of Utah saw it differently, but only after 18 years of damage. They finally realized that like nearly all Republicans, Bennett was a just a Democrat-lite.

Democrats stand for something. They stand for ever-increasing government power. To Democrats, every problem requires government to seize more power to solve that problem. The inevitable result is more and bigger problems and a steady march toward communism and collapse. Republicans don't stand for anything. Republicans position themselves to be slightly less bad than Democrats. If Democrats propose a $3 trillion budget, Republicans will propose $2.9 trillion. If Democrats propose a $4 trillion budget, Republicans will propose $3.9 trillion. If Democrats propose a 40 percent income tax rate, Republicans will propose 37 percent. If Democrats propose a 50 percent tax rate, Republicans will propose 47 percent. When Democrats proposed Obamacare, Republicans countered with Obamacare-lite. The differences between the two parties are only a small matter of degree. Republicans only pretend to support smaller government when they're in the minority and it's politically convenient. When they gain power, they expand the size and scope of government just like Democrats.  As Democrats drag America towards communism, Republicans push with them. We're on the cusp of suffering that endgame. The firing of Bennett shows that the conservatives of Utah demand we change direction toward freedom.

Democrats and the leftists that dominate the media and academia understand this, and that's why they're terrified of the tea parties. The tea parties are ousting their big-government Republican partners and replacing them with small government candidates. This threatens to reverse America's century-long march towards communism right when they are so close to realizing their dream. Because Rand Paul is the tea party favorite and he's running for senator, Democrats immediately attacked him after his victory. Trying to paint him and the tea party as racist, Rachel Maddow pressed Paul on whether or not he supported the Civil Rights Act. Instead of answering with principle that since portions of the Civil Rights Act unconstitutionally institutionalized bigotry, interfered with private property rights, and dictated to the states, he would not have supported it as written, he stumbled, looked embarrassed and eventually said he would have supported it. The system is already corrupting him because he's not principled like his father, and he's not even in office yet.

Which is why this small government push is too little, too late. No matter how badly Obama's policies drag down our economy, voters will return well over 400 incumbents to power. The same Republican and Democrat power brokers will be in charge. Small-government freshmen will be corrupted or washed out of the system. At best we'll see a temporary slowdown in the growth of government, but that won't save us. We have to dramatically reduce the size and scope of government if American as we know it is to survive.

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ECONOMY:

The M3 money supply is plunging, leading monetarist economists to predict a nasty secondary recession. Even though the Austrians dispute M3 is a valid measurement of the money supply, they agree another dip is coming, but they disagree on how to address it.

HEALTH CARE:

Canadians have discovered that when the price of health care is hidden from the public, they use more of it, driving up the costs. Duh. I'll give them a clue - let the market set the price.

GLOBAL WARMING:

James Hansen's GISS busted for deleting arctic temperature data to make it look warmer than it is.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Part of the solution to the illegal immigration problem is to make it easy for those who really want to work to come here. Another part is to restore the rancher's property rights so they can evict trespassers. Another part is to return immigration control to the states as the Constitution demands.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Israeli commandos storm the lead ship in an aid convoy for Gaza, and nine people end up dead. What a disaster.

"Israel's deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said his country "regrets any loss of life and did everything to avoid this outcome"."

This is another example of an aristocrat lying without conscious. Avoiding loss of life was easy - don't storm the ship. While I agree the motive for the convoy was to create a confrontation and an incident, the Israelis are clearly the aggressors and at fault for these deaths. They stormed the ship, not vice-versa.

The Commerce Department enforces an anti-Isreali boycott policy against Israel. I will penalize any company that boycotts Israel. That's crazy and unconstitutional.

POLITICS:

Cato calls Rand Paul's stumble on the Civil Rights Act principled, but they then admit he caved to political correctness.

"Despite how his comments have played, Paul has said he is glad that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. He accepts the Civil Rights Act as settled U.S. law — not to be revisited by the courts despite possible constitutional infirmities. "

You can't have it both ways. Paul supports using the government's gun to dictate to the states, centralizing authority in the federal government, interfering in private property rights of business owners and institutionalizing bigotry that society was previously overcoming. Paul's position is cowardly and politically correct.

MISC:

Robert Murphy shows that Herbert Hoover, contrary to everything you've heard, did not cut federal spending. He grew it, then Roosevelt grew it even faster.

China to become world's leading producer of supercomputers. Remember a few years back when the Bush administration blocked sales of supercomputers to China? That's how fast China is overtaking us economically because of the burden of government in the US. We're throwing away the greatest birthright any people on earth ever received because we're the stupidest people on earth.

Apple surpasses Microsoft in market-cap.

Study shows that cell phones disrupt bee hives which may explain the decline in bees.

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GLOBAL WARMING:

In defense of a the criminal investigation of Michael Mann.

"As the AG notes, “The same legal standards for fraud apply to the academic setting that apply elsewhere. The same rule of law, the same objective fact-finding process, will take place.” Some witch hunt.

There is simply no room in science, academia or public policy for manipulation, falsification or fraud. Academic freedom does not confer a right to engage in such practices, and both attorneys general and research institutions have a duty to root them out, especially in the case of climate change research."

Scientists are not above the law.

These idiots who want to fix our climate scare me. They're either too stupid or too dishonest to admit that climate change is natural, so there's no way anything good can come from them tampering with it.

WAR:

Great bumper sticker:

"Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country."

How true.

Is Obama planning to go to war in North Korea, Iran, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan? This would certainly advance Obama's agenda of collapsing the US.

POLITICS:

Britain's treasury secretary is a tax cheat too. They're all doing it.

MISC:

How can this oil spill be a worse eco-disaster than killing all the buffalo?

I have no doubt that the domination of our lives by government, and organization based on violence that can never have empathy, has infected young people and harmed their empathy for others. A system of voluntary exchange promotes empathy because cooperation is a requirement for success. In a government dominated system, violence is the path to success, and that requires a lack of empathy.

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REGULATION:

The Greeks can't win for losing. Their government dictated a 25 percent price cut in all medicines, and a leading supplier of insulin pulled out of the market.

"A spokesman for the Danish pharmaceutical company said it was withdrawing the product from the Greek market because the price cut would force its business in Greece to run at a loss.

The company was also concerned that the compulsory 25% reduction would have a knock-on effect because other countries use Greece as a key reference point for setting drug prices."

Good for Novo Nordisk. I bet this is just the first company to pull out. Make the government stop using violence on people in the marketplace and these problems will go away.

"International pharmaceutical companies are owed billions in unpaid bills. Novo Nordisk claims it is owed $36m (£24.9m) dollars by the Greek state."

You and I can't cheat on our bills then use violence to get away with it, and governments have no legitimate power to do that either. Greek's problems are created by its government. They won't be solved by it.

"The Greek diabetes association was more robust, describing the Danes' actions as "brutal blackmail" and "a violation of corporate social responsibility"."

What a load of horse manure. The corporation is acting in mutually benefit system of voluntary exchange. The Greek government is using violence to screw up that system. All the blame for this rests with the government. If government would withdraw its tentacles and guns from the private sector, the Greek people would quickly fix the problems it created and return Greece to a robust, growing economy.

"The Danish chairman, Lars Sorensen, wrote to Mr Panayotacos stressing that it was "the irresponsible management of finances by the Greek government which puts both you and our company in this difficult position".

People with diabetes in Greece have warned that some could die as a result of this action.

But a spokesman for Novo Nordisk said this issue was not about killing people. By way of compensation, he said the company would make available an insulin product called glucagen, free of charge."

Damn straight. The company is acting heroically, it doesn't have to give away anything for free, to help the Greek people harmed by their government.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The Fed is shrinking the monetary base. This means they fear inflation, which they should since the official CPI is over 2 percent and shadowstats has it over 5 percent. But the economy hasn't recovered. Shrinking the money supply will slow it down, so this is another sign we're going to soon experience the second dip of this depression.

80 percent of Americans want the Fed audited compared to only 9 percent who oppose an audit. But government doesn't care. It won't do it anyway.

Ron Paul led the movement to audit the Fed, and over 300 House members agreed and attached it to the financial oppression bill, but by the time the Senate passed a financial oppression bill, the power to audit the Fed was erased and now the Fed is going to audit us instead. That's government for you.

"As CNSNews.com reports, the bill "would create the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and empower it to “gather information and activities of persons operating in consumer financial markets,” including the names and addresses of account holders, ATM and other transaction records, and the amount of money kept in each customer’s account. The new bureaucracy is then allowed to “use the data on branches and [individual and personal] deposit accounts … for any purpose” and may keep all records on file for at least three years and these can be made publicly available upon request." Goodbye privacy, hello 1984."

Orwellian is right. Protection is redefined to mean assault on our privacy.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Here's a reminder that everything little thing people do to get the truth out makes a difference. The lie about polar bears being endangered by global warming no longer works. They need to come up with a new one. Have you noticed that there's not nearly as many, maybe not any, global warming movies on TV anymore? The truth is winning.

Arctic ice volume has increased by 25 percent since May 2008.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

In a wonderful essay explaining how we must thank capitalism for everything we have in the world, Lew Rockwell inadvertently explains why the US must control its borders:

"Bigger companies tend to be more likely to attract a kind of unpreventable unionization than smaller ones. The unions target them, with federal aid. It is no more or less complicated than that. It is for the same reason that developed economies have larger welfare states. The parasites prefer bigger hosts; that's all."

Yes they do. While most immigrants are not parasites, we need to control our borders to keep parasites out.
We haven't even been able to deal with the home-grown looters. They're winning.

"As we get older and see ever more young generations coming up behind us, we are often struck by the great truth that knowledge in this world is not cumulative over time. What one generation has learned and absorbed is not somehow passed on to the next one through genetics or osmosis. Each generation must be taught anew. Economic theory, I'm sorry to report, is not written on our hearts. It was a long time in the process of being discovered. But now that we know, it must be passed on — and in this way, it is like the ability to read, or to understand great literature. It is the obligation of our generation to teach the next generation."

I think this is the disconnect - the failure of parents to pass on essential knowledge to children. Allowing government to seize control of education from parents was the greatest blunder in history. The last thing government wants is for children to understand economics, the nature of government and the benefits of freedom and personal responsibility. Locking children into a system where they are regimented by force with same-age peers who dominate the experience is insanity.

FOREIGN POLICY:

UN makes fools out of the US and Israel over the Iranian nuclear issue by calling for a conference on a nuclear free middle east.

POLITICS:

Accusation that McCain and others covered up evidence of American POWs imprisoned in Vietnam.

LOCAL:

Headline complains parents bearing brunt of cost from closing subsidized child care centers. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. Why should others be forced at the point of a gun to bear the costs of caring for somebody else's child? To fix our society, we have to make sure the people who incur costs pay for them.

I'm not surprised that Dayton police have absolved themselves of any wrongdoing in the shooting of 44 dogs over the last two years. I'd be more surprised if they ever admitted fault. I'm sure shooting dogs is sometimes necessary as in the example in this story, but it's not credible that no officer made a mistake in 44 cases. Humans are not nearly perfect.

MISC:

It looks like Japan in out-innovating us on returning to the moon. That's because our space program is monopolized by government.

The federal government has empowered census workers to force landlords to allow them into apartments whether anybody is home or not.

BP's top-kill attempt to stop the leak failed, so they're immediately moving on to another option. Can you imagine if government was in charge of this? They wouldn't have done anything yet.

Thief was smart not to mess with nun.

Does anybody doubt that we would be using a better internet today had not government invented this one?

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FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Internet traffic should be managed by the dynamic, adaptive private sector for the good of consumers not by static government for the good of aristocrats. Net-neutrality is a euphemism for fascist internet.

TAX AND SPEND:

The coming sovereign debt crash is going to be worse than the 2008 financial crisis.

"The Club Med nations – and in many senses Britain – were not so different to sub-prime households: they borrowed cheap in order to raise their standards of living, ignoring the question of whether they could afford to take on so much debt. But, as King points out, sub-prime households – and the banks that lent to them – can usually be bailed out. The International Monetary Fund simply does not have enough cash to bail out a major economy like Spain, Italy or, heaven forfend, Britain. So, again, we find ourselves in unknown territory.

...

It is fashionable to compare the current situation to the Lehman Brothers collapse, but that understates its severity. The sub-prime property market in the US, together with its slightly less toxic relatives, represented a $2 trillion mound of debt. The combined public and private debt of the most troubled European countries – Greece, Portugal, Spain and so on – is closer to $9 trillion.

...

The problem is not merely that holders of Greek government debt would dump their investments, or even that they would ditch their Spanish and Portuguese bonds while they were at it. It is that government debt is the very bedrock of the financial system: should Greek government bonds collapse, the country's banking system would become insolvent overnight. In fact, banks throughout the euro area would be at risk, given that they tend to hold so much of their neighbours' government debt. That, at least, is the theory, but as was the case in the aftermath of Lehman's collapse, no one really knows how great their exposure is."

The sovereign debt problem isn't limited to those few countries. You can include Japan and the US in this group, and we're going to pay the piper big-time. When that happens, any government funding itself with debt won't be able to find lenders except at high interest rates. When government's start defaulting, the debt exposure will wipe out the imaginary wealth we're used to like a wildfire.

REGULATION:

Why does a company need permission to build a wave-powered desalination plant?

WAR ON DRUGS:

This essay is black markets in general, but I put it here anyway.

"When something becomes illegal, consumer demand does not vanish. Instead, consumers seek alternative, more costly and risky, means of satisfying their wants. Prices are higher than they would be otherwise, and product diversity, quality, and quantity demanded are lower. In view of suppressed demand and the potential to earn large profits, individuals with a knack for averting authorities direct their energy and resources to satisfy this demand. The illegality of the activity enables the intermediaries to ask higher prices of consumers and to bid down prices paid to growers of hemp, coca, and opium poppies. It gives rise to drug cartels, prostitution rings, and violence associated with the protection of "their" territories."

The question always is do we want an underground economy in product or service X or do we want an open economy in X. It's never a question of can we stop X. That won't happen. There's should be no such thing as black markets. People should be able to engage in any type of non-violent exchange they want without fearing governmental violence.

POLICE STATE:

Murray Rothbard criticizes forcing people to testify against their will.

WAR:

Maoists kill 65 in India. Terrorism isn't just for radical Muslims any more. The bigger government becomes, the more oppressive government becomes, the worse the world economy becomes, the more terrorism we're going to suffer.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Hillary Clinton explains Obama won't tolerate other countries determining their own policies.

China condemns the sinking of the South Korean ship but doesn't defer to the belief that North Korea is the culprit. This is probably what Clinton is talking about.

POLITICS:

The White House is claiming Rahm Emanuel asked Bill Clinton to ask Sestak to take an unpaid federal job in exchange for dropping out of the Democrat primary against Specter. This doesn't pass the sniff test. Funny how Obama had to drag Bill Clinton into this to try and deflect blame. I doubt the narcissist-in-chief would ever ask Bill Clinton for help, I doubt Clinton would help and offering Sestak and unpaid job makes no sense.

I doubt that offering Sestak a job will be Obama's Watergate only because the media wants to protect him whereas it wanted to destroy Nixon.

It sounds like Gary North read my latest, yet to be posted essay and my blog in general as he promotes a strategy of using the repeal of Obamacare to oust big-government Republicans.

"The reason why a bill to repeal this widely hated law would be effective in November is this: it will expose big-spending Republicans for what they really are. They are "me, too" Democrats. They are salami-slice Keynesians who believe in big government, but big government imposed by law at a slower rate. They want big government to subsidize big business and regulate entry in order to keep existing big businesses big. This has been the Republican Party's tradition ever since 1861.

The only reason why Republicans seem conservative these days is that, after Woodrow Wilson won in 1912, the Democrats have overtaken them in the spending category. George W. Bush did his best to reclaim the Party's position as the biggest spender, but Pelosi and Obama have fought back. The Democrats still hold the position as #1.

A bill to repeal Obama's health insurance law would force Republican candidates to fish or cut bait. It would force them to take a stand against centralization in order to get elected. They would have to commit to vote for a bill so short -- six words -- that it could not be modified without gutting it, which is what Republicans really want to do."

He's exactly right.

MISC:

Description of the Deepwater Horizon disaster naturally calls for more government regulation, as if bureaucrats know more about this kind drilling than the people who do it for a living.

Quote from The Cult of the Presidency by Gene Healy, page 21:

"The Framers, [John] Yoo argued, understood "the exectuve power" in light of the British constitutional tradition, and in that tradition, taking the country into war was a royal prerogative. Though Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution gives Congress the power "to declare War," that power, Yoo argued, was far narrower than most modern scholars understood it to be, and it did not limit the president's ability to wage war at the time of his choosing."

What a crock. The Hamiltonians tried to make the case for a strong executive at the Constitution Convention, and it was rejected. The Founding Fathers were not of one mind. They made all kinds of arguments, but in the end, they wrote the Constitution which was ratified by the states. It means what it says. I'm glad to see Healy makes that point on page 24:

"And for the purposes of determining the Constitution's allocation of powers, Hamilton's sincerity [in the Federalist Papers] - or lack thereof - hardly matters. In the ratification conventions, Americans approved the constitutional text, not the secret desires of Alexander Hamilton or any other Framer."

The argument of one or many Framers does not matter. The text of the Constitution is what was ratified and what matters.

Scientists manipulate food at the molecular level. They can't possibly know all the ramifications of this.

Volcano blows a smoke ring.

In praise of the essential ingredient of economic growth - savings and the misers who save.

"Ever since the first caveman saved seed corn for future planting, the human race has owed a debt of gratitude to the hoarders, misers, and savers. It is to those people who refused to use up at once their entire store of wealth and chose rather to save it for a needy time that we owe the capital equipment that enables us to aspire to a civilized standard of living.

It is true, of course, that such people became richer than their fellows, and perhaps thereby earned their enmity. Perhaps the whole process of saving and accumulating was cast into disrepute along with the saver. But the enmity is not deserved. For the wages earned by the masses are intimately dependent upon the rate at which the saver can accumulate money."

Without savings, we'd all be hunter-gatherers still today.

Britain to end national ID program and abolish ID database.

"The £4.5bn national identity card scheme is to be scrapped within 100 days, the home secretary, Theresa May, announced today.

The 15,000 identity cards already issued are to be cancelled without any refund of the £30 fee to holders within a month of the legislation reaching the statute book.

Abolishing the cards and associated register will be the first piece of legislation introduced to parliament by the new government. May said the identity documents bill will invalidate all existing cards.

The role of the identity commissioner, created in an effort to prevent data blunders and leaks, will be abolished."

That's fantastic news for the Brits. Don't expect our government to follow.

Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Reason wonders what the mission of the new cyber-warfare command is. It's to seize control of the internet.

SOCIALISM:

Bailing out labor union pensions is a big kiss to labor unions from Democrats for helping them win in 2008.

ECONOMY:

Americans are becoming more slaves to the government.

Prediction of a big crash before the end of the year.

TAX AND SPEND:

Democrats know darn good and well that hiking the millionaire's tax won't increase revenues because it will push people to leave New York, but they're proposing it anyway. California Democrats propose massive new taxes that will push productive people and businesses out of the state. They know darn good and well this will make California's problems worse, but all they care about is their jobs so they're doing it anyway.

REGULATION:

Government puts its boot on the neck of children including two five year olds for selling lemonade without a license only to later discover the children didn't need a license. I'm shocked they didn't need a license.

Wall Street firms doing victory lap because of financial oppression that will make them richer and us poorer.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Bernanke's going off the deep end. Now he's claiming that, if left free from political forces, central banks would guarantee no boom-bust cycles and no inflation. He says that with a straight face knowing full well that the Fed has destroyed 96 percent of the value of the dollar since it was created. It reminds of that scene in the Titanic when the guy says the ship unsinkable as it's taking on water.

Along with all the other damage Chavez is doing to Venezuela, he's printing money like crazy, and we know how that's going to end.

"Venezuela's market has been absolutely flattened by an overburdening government. Nationalization turned vibrant industries into dead factories, while regulations and price fixing crushed what remained of the private sector. With no true recovery possible, the regime has turned to the printing press as the solution to its economic problems. But, as events clearly show, this has not led to prosperity. It has only led to further suffering, as inflation quickly erodes Venezuelan savings and further damages Venezuelan industry.

Far from the recovery claimed by Mark Weisbrot, the continuation of current fiscal and monetary policies will bring immeasurable pain upon the people of Venezuela. Unless Hugo Chavez's government suddenly ends spending and returns to a free market, the most likely conclusion to current events in Venezuela is a crisis of interventionism"

Obama and Bernanke are doing the same thing to us.

EDUCATION:

New Jersey school teacher busted for lying about her salary while grandstanding about budget cuts.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Australian government spends $15 million on seminar series teaching global warming frauds how to deal with skeptics. And you thought government was supposed to be fair and on your side.

Myths of so-called green energy.

""One nuclear power plant in Texas covers about 19 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Manhattan. To produce the same amount of power from wind turbines would require an area the size of Rhode Island. This is energy sprawl." To produce the same amount of energy with ethanol, another "green" fuel, it would take 24 Rhode Islands to grow enough corn.

...

Maybe the electric car is the next big thing?

"Electric cars are the next big thing, and they always will be."  

There have been impressive headlines about electric cars from my brilliant colleagues in the media. The Washington Post said, "Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they're within reach of the average family."

That was in 1915.  

In 1959, The New York Times said, "Electric is the car of the tomorrow."  

In 1979, The Washington Post said, "GM has an electric car breakthrough in batteries, now makes them commercially practical."

I'm still waiting.

"The problem is very simple," Bryce said. "It's not political will. It's simple physics. Gasoline has 80 times the energy density of the best lithium ion batteries. There's no conspiracy here of big oil or big auto. It's a conspiracy of physics.""

If wind and solar power or electric cars were more efficient, people would be profiting from them without subsidies.

WAR:

The narcissist-in-chief thinks he can convince Muslims that America is not at war with Islam by saying so even though he'll continue to kill Muslims in Muslim countries. Needless to say, this is worthless.

POLITICS:

Female South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate busted for affair. They're all doing it.

MISC:

It looks like BP finally managed to stop the Gulf oil leak at least temporarily. Gulf spill surpasses Exxon Valdez. Lessons from the oil spill.

"BTW, good for TPM for noting that natural oil spills (called seeps) dump roughly four Exxon Valdezes into the Gulf each year. But since the seeps are not man-associated, they are ignored."

You can't point fingers of blame at natural oil leaks. Pictures from the oil spill. Natural oil leaks don't do this.

Hillary Clinton encourages college graduates to work for the government as a parasite instead of doing productive work. That directly contradicts her admonition for them to work for the public good.

Everything you love you owe to capitalism.

The words state, statism, static and status quo share a common theme. They are the opposite of progress, and government is the enemy of human progress because it takes away individual choice and reduces options. How ironic is it that the ideologues who hate and resist human progress the most call themselves progressives? As if he'd been reading my blog, Jeffrey Tucker explains:

"Everyone knows that the Obama administration’s decision to suspend consideration of applications to drill in the Arctic is driven by political considerations, some attempt to “respond” to the BP mess in the Gulf. But what strikes me as just how willy nilly the state acts toward the goods and services that fuel civilization itself. The decision makes us all poorer on the margin, increases “dependency” of the U.S. on foreign oil, drives up prices, and sets back social advance in every way – all in the name of some random attempt for one guy to appear “strong” and “act” in the face of an accident. It’s rarely been more obvious, day to day, that the machinery of the state, while pretending to be the caretaker of mother earth, only destroys hope for real human beings."

Other than punishing criminals and enforcing contracts, property rights and individual rights, every action the government takes slows human progress.

NOAA predicts busy Atlantic hurricane season - again. It always predicts this, and like a broken clock, it's right every now and then.

NBA star Dwayne Wade explains the economics of collusion.

"Miami Heat player Dwayne Wade becomes a free agent on July 1. So does LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Joe Johnson of the Atlanta Hawks, and Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors. The four men are the cream of the 2010 NBA free agent crop. And according to Wade (via the Chicago Tribune), they plan to consult one another about their decisions on where to sign:

Wade said he’s not sure when the top free agents will discuss their respective plans, though they have spoken informally in the past.

“(Free agency) has been three years coming,” Wade said. “We’ve discussed it prematurely, at different times. (But) you don’t know what guys are thinking and where they’re going. I think we’ll all sit down, and before one of us makes a decision, all of us will have spoken to each other and (listened to the) thinking.

“A lot of decisions (will be based on) what other players are willing to do and what other guys want to do. So it’s not just a ‘me’ situation here. We all have to look and see what each other is thinking.”

There’s nothing remarkable about Wade’s statements — except that he’s admitting to a felony punishable by a $1 million fine and ten years imprisonment. That’s the “max contract” for price fixing these days. And what Wade describes is in fact an illegal price-fixing cartel."

Those collusion laws are nuts.

More eminent domain abuse. Greed is wanting to take something from another by force instead of through voluntary exchange.

Paleolithic diet.

"Around 10,000 years ago, an enormous breakthrough was made- a breakthrough that was to change the course of history, and our diet, forever. This breakthrough was the discovery that cooking these foods made them edible- the heat destroyed enough toxins to render them edible. Grains include wheat, corn, barley, rice, sorghum, millet and oats. Grain based foods also include products such as flour, bread, noodles and pasta. These foods entered the menu of New Stone Age (Neolithic) man, and Paleolithic diet buffs often refer to them as Neolithic foods.

The cooking of grains, beans and potatoes had an enormous effect on our food intake- perhaps doubling the number of calories that we could obtain from the plant foods in our environment. Other advantages were soon obvious with these foods:

· they could store for long periods (refrigeration of course being unavailable in those days)

· they were dense in calories- ie a small weight contains a lot of calories, enabling easy transport

· the food was also the seed of the plant- later allowing ready farming of the species

These advantages made it much easier to store and transport food. We could more easily store food for winter, and for nomads and travelers to carry supplies. Food storage also enabled surpluses to be stored, and this in turn made it possible to free some people from food gathering to become specialists in other activities, such as builders, warriors and rulers. This in turn set us on the course to modern day civilization. Despite these advantages, our genes were never developed with grains, beans and potatoes and were not in tune with them, and still are not. Man soon improved further on these advances- by farming plants and animals."

Storage of grain, the first savings accounts, enabled the division of labor and therefore civilization, but it's not good for our diet.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Maybe bus passengers know this, so they really are spitting on bus drivers.

"Bus drivers in New York City (unionized) took an average of two paid months off last year. They got paid to not come into work. Why?Because they claimed that they were spat upon by upset riders and this is considered an "assault" under the drivers' union contract. When a bus driver is spit upon they are then entitled to take a paid leave of absence. The unions claims that being spat upon causes psychological trauma because workers could catch diseases or risk being assaulted again."

But probably not.

ECONOMY:

This is an excellent top 10 list of the lessons learned from the global meltdown, but I would note that while no individual understands any economy, the Austrian economists understand economic principles which is why they accurately predicted this crisis and they're predicting we're still going downhill.

Against the underground economy.

TAX AND SPEND:

Good reminder of the character of the people who rise to the top of our political system, people who lie without conscience, and who are the most power-hungry, selfish and self-absorbed people in America:

"Democrats in Congress have added $173 billion in new spending to the federal deficit in just three months since they passed a law requiring that any new expenditures be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget.

They will try this week to add another $197 billion in two separate measures. The House is expected to vote Wednesday on a package of extensions in government aid to unemployed Americans, Medicaid funding for states, and tax breaks that will add $134 billion to the $1.4 trillion deficit."

These are people who spend their lives in and out of prison in a free society because the only way they can get ahead is using violence against others, but who become rulers in a government dominated society.


Obama wants $30 more billion to create price inflation - I mean entice banks to make loans to small businesses. Additional loans are the source of price inflation.


This kind of corruption is the inevitable result of government stealing money from the people at the point of a gun to fund itself.

"Twenty one employees of the Federal Protective Service spent more than $100,000 in government funds for clothing and flat-screen TVs, gym memberships and tuition payments, according to a General Services Administration inspector general report, but none has faced disciplinary action."

We have nobody to blame for this but ourselves. This corruption will never go away until we take away the government's power to tax.

REGULATION:

BP admits it decided to continue work on the Deepwater Horizon oil well despite a test that warned of a very large abnormality.

"Oil giant BP PLC told congressional investigators that a decision to continue work on an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after a test warned that something was wrong may have been a "fundamental mistake," according to a memo released by two lawmakers Tuesday.

The document describes a wide array of mistakes in the fateful final hours aboard the Deepwater Horizon—but the main revelation is that BP now says there was a clear warning sign of a "very large abnormality" in the well, but work proceeded anyway."

Why would BP take that risk? Because it could afford to be wrong. Because BP and other oil giants are protected from competition by onerous regulations, BP has very little competition. That allowed it to charge higher prices and develop deeper pockets than it could have in a free market. In a free market, BP would not have made that decision because it couldn't afford to be wrong. That would have bankrupted the company. Regulations freed BP from the discipline imposed by free markets. Regulations insulated BP from the consequences of risk, so it made a risky decision, 13 people died and hundreds if not thousands have lost their livelihoods. Government kills. BP must be held responsible for the consequences of its actions, but we must also get rid of the regulations that create perverse incentives to take dangerous risks.

There's a culture of cronyism between corporations and regulators in every industry, not just oil. It's called regulatory capture. It's a well known phenomenon, and the laws of human nature make it inevitable. But even if regulatory capture wasn't inevitable, there's no such thing as good regulations because regulations always protect the biggest corporations from competition and market discipline, allowing them to grow bigger and take more risks.

The brownie recipe for US troops is 26 pages. You wonder why we're being crushed under the burden of government.

Ohio dairy farm cruelty. Somebody should catch these sadistic freaks in a back alley and do the same to them. It makes me want to only buy dairy from farmers I know. I'm happy to see this video publicized, but government regulation is not the answer. This is already a consequence of the corporatization of farms because of regulation. No matter how much you dislike this violence, government regulation will only make things worse. It always does.

POLICE STATE:

We often overlook one of the major priorities of the police state - raising revenue by uniformed tax collectors like from red light cameras.

"Just take a look at the statistics from West Palm Beach's little experiment with red light cameras. During the first 90 days that red light cameras were in place, rear-end collisions doubled and the number of accidents increased from the same time last year. But that matters not, because all city officials see are dollar signs - 2,675 camera fines were issued, generating a third of a million dollars .. and that was just in the month of March."

We know the public safety argument is a fraud in all aspects of the police state. We watched the video of the SWAT team endangering the lives of a seven year old child and his parents when the warrant could have been served far more safely in another fashion. The police state has nothing to do with safety. It's all about power.

POLITICS:

President Obama continues to pretend that bipartisanship means Republicans must jump on board his agenda. He's incapable of seeing it any other way.

"President Barack Obama and Senate Republicans called a high-noon cease-fire in their long-running political feud Tuesday, holding a rare, private meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss what legislation can be achieved during this volatile election year.

"We want to see if we can get some more work done," Obama told reporters on the way into the session."

The last thing I want to see is a cease-fire between Republicans and Democrats. I want to Obama to cease firing on the American people.

Then Senator Obama opposed the executive power grab over the budget that President Obama now supports. Duh. That's like saying that a baseball player on the Reds wanted the Reds to win then but now that he's on the Indians he wants the Indians to win. Why is this news?

Unions plan to spend $100 million to keep Democrat incumbents in office. That's our money. That's money that Democrats looted from the people at the point of the government's gun on behalf of the unions.

MEDIA:

The press is using the Civil Rights Act to distract people from the issues that prompted them to vote for Rand Paul: debt, health care, etc.

MISC:

Ron Paul explained the problems with the Civil Rights Act in 2004. This is well worth a read. His son should have studied it better.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Dow drops below 10,000. The Dow has dropped over 1,000 points since May. 10 percent. We're starting the second dip of this depression, and nobody wants to admit it.

TAX AND SPEND:

You knew it was coming. Congress to pass oil tax hike ostensibly to fight oil spills. You know what will happen: they'll spend that money buying votes and none will be available the next time we have a big oil spill.

Newt Gingrich is jumping on the bandwagon by saying government is the next bubble to burst. I give him credit for being able to tell which way the wind is blowing and get on board.

While this might sound like a good idea to cut spending, it's not. There Constitution doesn't give the president the power to order Congress to vote on something. The Congress is not the servant of the president. This is a watered-down version of the line item veto, it's unconstitutional for the same reason and if enacted, it would just give the president power to wipe out earmarks from the other party, empowering him and his party.

USA Today gets it right:

"Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year, a USA TODAY analysis of government data finds.

At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

Those records reflect a long-term trend accelerated by the recession and the federal stimulus program to counteract the downturn. The result is a major shift in the source of personal income from private wages to government programs.

The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes. Reason: The federal government depends on private wages to generate income taxes to pay for its ever-more-expensive programs. Government-generated income is taxed at lower rates or not at all, he says. “This is really important,” Grimes says."

I'm glad the article notes this isn't just a temporary situation because of the depression. It's a long-term trend pushed by both Republicans and Democrats then accelerated by Obama that's unsustainable and in danger of imminent collapse, just like Obama wants.

Obama and Democrats push another stimulus boondoggle. They can't seem to realize the more votes they try to buy by sucking our money out of the private sector by force, the worse our economy becomes and the more votes they lose.

Great article from the Onion.

"White House Jester Beheaded For Making Fun Of Soaring National Debt"

Too funny.

REGULATION:

Comparison of House and Senate financial oppression bills. Wall Street is not in retreat. Firms are just happy to get more protection from competition so they take bigger risks, get richer at our expense and do more damage when they guess wrong. Cato explains:

"Start with ending "too big to fail": Despite Dodd's floor statements (and improvements made at the request of Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on Dodd's committee), the bill actually further enshrines the special and privileged status of our largest financial institutions. It squashes whatever hope there was of bringing back market discipline to our largest financial institutions — and guarantees ever-increasing concentration in our financial markets.

Going forward, we are left with relying on only the discretionary wisdom of the same regulators who were asleep at the wheel last time. And though that crisis cost millions their jobs, the Dodd bill won't see even one incompetent bureaucrat lose his.

Yes, the Dodd bill eliminates the Office of Thrift Supervision — but it guarantees that all OTS employees will have jobs at the new bank regulator. How exactly is moving around boxes on the organizational chart going to prevent the next financial crisis? (Ironically, OTS was itself created in the "crackdown" after another Washington-sparked meltdown, the savings-and-loan crisis of the late '80s.)"

This bill doesn't even have many specifics. It leaves them to the executive branch, making regulation even worse.


Regulators accepted oil company gifts. That's regulatory capture. That's how it always works.

Murray Rothbard advocates abolishing anti-trust laws.

The benefits of insider trading. The more and better information that gets into the market sooner, the better. I'd like to know what in the Constitution gives the government the power to ban insider trading.

"Insider-trading laws deny markets important information. The recent financial crisis was caused in large part by inadequate information. People didn't know the true value of mortgage-backed securities, leading to a financial house of cards that crashed down on federal agencies, investment houses, commercial banks and average investors."

If insiders at AIG, Lehman Brothers and others had started dumping stock, that information would have entered the marketplace, and the damage from the financial collapse would have been greatly reduced.

"The distinction between public and non-public information is legally decisive but economically unimportant. Perversely, the insider-trading laws seek to prevent people from trading on the most accurate and up-to-date information. The law seeks to force everyone to make today's decisions based on yesterday's data. It's a genuinely stupid thing to do."

Of course it is. Using the threat of violence to keep people ignorant is indefensible.

"Acting on new information moves the market toward the right or "honest" price, as economist Donald J. Boudreaux puts it. Prosecuting people for insider trading slows the price-adjustment process. That means the price shock when the relevant news hits the market will be more abrupt and the losses will be greater for some people."

Yes it does.

"Yet the SEC employs sophisticated computer software to identify a few "suspicious" trades out of hundreds of millions of transactions. Agency enforcement chief Khuzami wants greater access to grand-jury information and greater power to pressure defendants to turn in their confederates."

And enforcing these bogus laws costs us money. It makes poorer coming and going. The fairness argument is just silly. Some guys have special knowledge how to build bridges. Others have knowledge how to farm. Others have knowledge how to trim tree. They all profit from their special knowledge, and others without that knowledge can't. The division of labor, the foundation of everything we have today, requires specialized knowledge. Special knowledge from being an insider is no different.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Because banks refuse to make loans, we're not experiencing hyper-inflation yet. As soon as they begin to loan, if they begin to loan, we will.

HEALTH CARE:

63 percent of voters want Obamacare repealed and will be disappointed.

GLOBAL WARMING:

It's no mystery why support for the global warming fraud has collapsed in Great Britain - climategate and the weather.

"Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier."

But the British were too late. They have CO2 cuts enshrined in law, and they'll pay a hefty price for that.

Greece wants to build a green economy. Because it worked so well in Spain. Our tax dollars are funding this, and it will cause Greece to collapse even faster.

Modeling without real-world data can produce whatever result is desired including the bogus claim that polar bears are endangered.

Contrary to predictions by global warming frauds, arctic sea ice coverage is as robust as ever.

When the planet warms, biodiversity increases (despite what the frauds say). So now that we're entering a period of global cooling, we can expect biodiversity to decrease, and this UN push to use violence ostensibly to protect biodiversity will gain steam. Don't fall for it. Natural resources are scare resources like any other, and the only system known to man that does a good job of managing scarce resources is a free market and private property rights.

WAR ON DRUGS:

The war on drugs killed 30 more people in Jamaica.

POLICE STATE:

Remember when behavior profiling was going to protect us against terrorists?

"A team of more than 3,000 "behaviour detection" officers hired to spot terrorists at US airports have failed to catch a single person despite costing the taxpayer $200 million last year."

"16 people accused of being part of terrorist plots have passed through US airports undetected a total of 23 times since 2004 - a number of them since the scheme was started - according to an investigation by the Government Accountability Office."

More of our tax dollars down the drain.


Cop avoids negligent homicide charge because he's a cop.

"Lars Gardner of St. George, Utah walked away unscathed from the March 11 accident he caused when he plowed his car into a tan Buick carrying 71-year-old Karen Gummow, and 75-year-old Illa Jean Moore. Neither of the women — who were on their way to a women’s gathering at a nearby church when Gardner blindsided them — survived the crash.

Gardner was entirely at fault in the accident, yet no criminal charges were filed against him. A civil suit would most likely be thrown out of court.

Need it even be said that Gardner is a costumed agent of state coercion, and the women he killed were mere Mundanes?

At the time of the accident, Gardner, an officer of the Utah Highway Patrol, was driving 86 miles an hour in a 40 MPH zone. He was en route to a separate traffic accident 45 miles away that had taken place at least a half hour earlier.

By the time Gardner received the call, the accident scene was already secure. Some sense of the relative urgency of Gardner’s errand can be gained from his own description of the response he provided when he received the call: “Yeah, let me clean up, get dressed, grab a snack, and I’ll be on my way.”"

I wonder what it's like to never have to be responsible for the people you kill and the damage you do. It can only be powerfully corrupting. Do you think he bothered to say he's sorry?

TSA builds database of passengers it doesn't like. This is what government does to everything it touches.

"The "T[ransportation] S[ecurity] A[dministration] is a bureaucratic nightmare," thunders Rep. John Mica (R-FL), one of the nightmare’s "creat[ors]." Thank to him and his accomplices, you fume in long lines at airports waiting for goons to feel you up and loot your belongings. Yet this guy who’s skulked around government most of his life and who therefore knows exactly how it works (or, more accurately, that it doesn’t) complains that the TSA has "over 60,000 employees," so it’s "top heavy with supervisory and administrative staff. At TSA headquarters, where 30 percent of employees are supervisors, the average salary is over $105,000." Of course, in addition to having authorized the TSA, Mica also votes to steal the $7 billion from us each year that overpays these leeches. And yet he shamelessly concludes, "This is a massive bureaucracy that cannot effectively ensure the safety of U.S. transportation systems, and something must be done to improve the agency’s performance." Ya think?"

Privatize. It should have never been socialized.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Sam Donaldson compares Mexican president criticizing Arizona law to US president criticizing Tienanmen Square massacre. I don't understand the problem. The Mexican president can say what he wants. Others can respond. That's what freedom including freedom of speech is all about. Lord knows the US government has stuck its nose in everybody else's business and manipulated other countries including causing violence that we have no business complaining if some foreign government leader criticizes us.

Obama escalates the militarization of the Mexican border by sending 1,200 National Guard troops to the border, escalating the border war we're losing because of the war on drugs. One of their jobs will be drug enforcement. Government cannot change the laws of economics any more than they can change the laws of physics. This will drive up the price of drugs, making the Mexican drug cartels richer, more powerful and more violent. More people on both sides of the border will die. Everybody will lose except the drug cartels.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Here's the high points of North Korea's war-like response to South Korea. We have no business being involved in this. It's stupid, and it endangers Americans. North prepares for war. It looks like that nuclear appeasement might just lead to war, but that's unlikely right now. Kim Jong Il doesn't want to have his palaces destroyed. I hope it doesn't turn out that we'd have been better off destroying the North's nuclear program before they developed the bomb, but I think that's going to be the case. I still think the opportunity exists for a grand bargain as a carrot. I wonder what role China's leaders played in helping NK develop the bomb. They had to realize that NK couldn't continue as a communist country for much longer with South Korea next door showing how much superior life is in relative freedom. But this bomb empowers the communist regime, which China's leaders probably see to be in their best interest.

MISC:

Modern so-called anarchist societies in Southeast Asia. I'd like to read this. I'm willing to bet they have some kind of government, be it by elder or some other form.

Great lecture shows how lack of IP protection promotes creativity in fashion and other industries and suggests IP protection stunts creativity in other industries.

The other side of the businessman's discrimination issue. Don't give Obama any ideas. He'll pass a law requiring white people to buy a certain amount of stuff from black businessmen whether they want the stuff or not.

It looks like the Maine Republican party is going the right direction.

"An overwhelming majority of delegates to the Maine Republican convention recently voted to scrap the proposed party platform and replace it with a document created by a group of liberty activists.

The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, the Federal Reserve, a drastic cut in spending while balancing the budget, instituting a plan for paying down the debt, proclaiming that generational debt shifting is immoral and unconscionable and will not be tolerated, asserting the 10th Amendment sovereignty right of the State of Maine, insisting on the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, supporting a “Read the Bills” act, to insure clarity, eliminating the corruption associated with earmarks, pork and riders, a call for transparent and honest reporting of economic statistics free of gimmicks and distortions while suggesting a return to the principles of “Austrian Economics,” and a redirection of the economy to one of incentives toward savings and investment."

In order for this to have any teeth, they have to oust their two liberal Republican Senators.

The White House explains why it's taking so long to shut down the Gulf oil leak:

""All decisions about the clean up, all decisions about shutting down the well are being run through the federal government," Browner said. "The federal government is in charge.""

The US Army Corp of Engineers is blocking permits for some actions, slowing down the process. It takes a lot longer to explain why you should do something and get permission than it takes to just act, and it's ridiculous a governor has to ask permission to deal with a local problem.


Government, because it's violence against some people on behalf of others, always divides and angers. This is always immoral and corrupt. It inevitably creates more problems.

"The civil rights laws are supposed to end discrimination and segregation, and to promote harmony.

But coercion never produces harmony. How harmonious are people who are being forced to act against their will? Most likely, those who are coerced will resent those who benefit from the coercion. This sets group against group; it doesn't bring them together."

Overruling state laws that institutionalized discrimination was a good thing. Using the government's gun to take away the right of free association was a bad thing. Instead of overcoming racial division, the Civil Rights Act institutionalized it at the federal level. Since it's unconstitutional, it should be nullified.

"The civil rights laws originated to end segregation of the races in the South. But in 1992 a Florida court used these laws to award a white woman permanent disability benefits – ruling that her employer should have provided a segregated workplace to accommodate her fear of blacks."

"I've used the Civil Rights Act as an example of the way a well-intentioned government program grows and causes far more problems than it solves. But it is just one example.

All government programs expand to encompass the political demands of people who want to take advantage of its benefits. And almost all government programs eventually do the opposite of what their original backers had asked for."

Corruption always flows from violence, including the corruption of the purpose of the very laws that perpetrate the violence.