Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Do Republicans stand up for freedom including free markets or do they support socialism? Republicans introduce bill to regulate, not privatize, Fannie and Freddie.

ECONOMY:

Nice explanation of how the minimum wage specifically and welfare in general harms the poor.

"The only reason that the U.S. standard of living continued rising during the era of American socialism was that the private sector continued accumulating savings and wealth faster than federal officials were confiscating it. The invention of computers, for example, almost immediately made workers much more productive.

But it is impossible to say how much more productive Americans would be – how much higher our standards of living would be – if the wealth-producing process that our American ancestors had brought into existence had been free to continue. If Americans had never adopted the income tax and the welfare state, it boggles the mind to think how much better off the American people would be, especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder."

We'd probably have already colonized Mars. let alone the moon.

TAX AND SPEND:

I wouldn't call a 2 percent cut in military spending "big cuts". And that's only the Pentagon budget. Our total military budget is closer to $1 trillion.

Gary North has the same plan for eliminating the government debt that I do:

"Cut spending until income equals outflow. Then cut it some more."

It's not any harder than that. The Founding Fathers gave us the perfect tool to make that happen - the Constitution. All it takes is to elect a president who will use his power of nullification to reduce the size and scope of the federal government to constitutional limits as soon as he takes office. I think a Republican who ran on that simple agenda in 2012 would win. But even Ron Paul isn't that aggressive.

Peter Schiff predicts the sovereign debt crisis will not be limited to PIGS.

"During the housing boom, subprime and prime borrowers made many of the same mistakes. Both groups overpaid for their homes, bought with low or no down payments, financed using ARMs instead of fixed rate mortgages, and repeatedly cashed out appreciated home equity through re-financings. The market largely overlooked the glaring similarities, and instead merely focused on FICO scores. Yes, prime borrowers had better credit, but their losses on underwater properties were no less devastating. As the magnitude of home price declines intensified, prime borrowers defaulted in levels that were almost as high as the subprime crowd.

So when mortgage-backed securities started to go bad, it wasn't as if the problems emanated in subprime and subsequently "contaminated" the rest of the market. All borrowers were infected with the same disease, but the symptoms merely expressed themselves sooner in subprime. The same is true on a national level, whereby Greece plays the part of the subprime borrower. Though the U.S. is considered to be the highest order of "prime" borrower, based on historic precedent, our debt to GDP levels are at crisis levels, and are not that much lower than Portugal or Spain. When off-budget and contingency liabilities are properly accounted for, one could argue that we are already in worse financial shape than Greece."

Greece is the canary in the coal mine, and we're in the coal mine with it.

This is the equation economists use to calculate GDP:

""

The G in that equation is government spending. So if the economy recedes by $10 billion, but government spending increases by $20 billion, GDP increases by $10 billion. In other words, the government can manipulate the GDP numbers to make appear the economy is growing just by increasing spending which sucks money out of the productive private sector, puts us deeper in debt and makes us all poorer. This is another reason government is addicted to spending, and this is exactly why it looks like our economy is recovering.

Farm carved up to pay for death tax.

REGULATION:

The SEC was aware of the mortgage bond problems as early as 2006, but it did nothing about them. That's because of regulatory capture. What isn't said here is the reason those bonds were a problem in the first place was the loose monetary police of the Fed and government-created lack of competition in the ratings market. Are we supposed to be surprised the government failed to head the consequences of government's policies?

In another example of regulatory capture, Obama administration waved requirement for ecological study for BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

The stock market collapse has given government another reason to regulate.

"The stocks meltdown stemmed from growing concern about the Greek debt crisis and was widely believed to have been exacerbated by at least one large erroneous trade. It sparked outrage among investors and politicians already up in arms over Wall Street's role in the global recession.

"We cannot allow a technological error to spook the markets and cause panic," Rep. Paul Kanjorski said late on Thursday. "This is unacceptable." A U.S. House of Representatives panel chaired by Mr. Kanjorski will examine the causes of the market swoon at a hearing next Tuesday."

Democrats don't want the stock market to fall while they're in power. They want to regulate risk and human error out of the market, which will of course take the reward out too.

GLOBAL WARMING:

We know that atmospheric CO2 has been significantly higher in the past, yet the planet didn't suffer any runaway global warming. We know the planet was significantly warmer when the dinosaurs walked the Earth, but the planet did suffer any runaway global warming. From this we can deduce that the Earth has negative feedback mechanisms that mitigate greenhouse effects from CO2. But the global warming frauds pretend this isn't true. Now we have satellite data that confirm those negative feedback mechanisms that limit any greenhouse effects from increased CO2. This fraud is over. It's exposed. But the political power and wealth to be gained from this fraud keep it alive.

If you're looking for a silver lining from the oil spill, it pretty much killed Obama's tax and trade bill in the Senate. Pretty much. Don't trust that it's dead yet.

"Without the support of Mr. Graham and at least a handful of Republicans, the measure is most likely dead for the year. But two other sponsors, Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, vowed to press forward and said they planned to unveil some version of their climate change and energy plan next week."

There's too much power and wealth to be stolen for it to die completely.

POLICE STATE:

Where have we heard this before: government wants more power.

"The attempted Times Square bombing has underscored the challenge of managing security threats from citizens with clean records, but U.S. authorities are limited in the tools they can employ to legally monitor travel and other behavior of Americans who haven’t otherwise aroused suspicion."

Thank goodness. Let's keep it that way. In a sane, constitutional country, the vendors around that smoking SUV would have pulled their guns on the not-bomber, captured him and turned him over to the police. We wouldn't have needed Army assets operating on US soil against a US citizen to apprehend him. This not-bomber, not wanting to be a suicide bomber, might well have decided not to try to bomb anything. A well-regulated militia is necessary for security in a free state.

POLITICS:

It looks like tea partiers ousted incumbent Republican Senator from Utah. I'm happy to see it, but that's only one. It's going to take a lot more than that to change the direction the two parties have been taking our country for 100 years.

MISC:

Aerial images of the Gulf oil spill.

BP's first attempt at using oil dome has problems.

Spanish government shuts down airports because of Iceland volcano ash cloud.

More analysis showing that Venus is not hot because of the greenhouse effect of CO2 but because of the thickness of its atmosphere.

The very first Congress passed an unconstitutional, power-grabbing law. Of course it did. It was made up of aristocrats. I still don't understand this concern about judicial review. The Supreme Court adjudicates disputes. In order to do so, it must follow the law. The highest law of the land is the Constitution, so if a law conflicts with the Constitution, the Constitution has to take precedence and that law must be ignored by the courts - or struck down as we call it today. If the Constitution means anything, it can't be any other way.

"Ever since 1803, America's government has pretended to operate a limited, democratic republic but has actually been an oligopoly of lawyers. And since Article Three was crafted (and left blank) with all deliberate intent, I suggest that's the way the founders always planned it."

It's more likely, like all things designed by committee, they just couldn't reach a consensus.