Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Reason is holding an everybody draw Mohammad contest. Good for them.

If you want to know what's going to happen in the US, just look at Great Britain:

"Another “pensioner,” 74-year-old Roy Newman, got sick of the various party hacks knocking on his door and put a sign up in his front window: “GET THE LOT OUT.” Ninety minutes later, two police officers arrived at his home to arrest him for “racism.”

Racism? Why, yes. His sign was a piece of white card with red and blue lettering. Red-white-and-blue, geddit? The colours of the Union Jack. If using the same colour scheme as the national flag isn’t coded racism, I don’t know what is. Mr. Newman was prevailed upon to alter some of the letters to yellow, thereby diminishing the racist subtext."

I don't understand why every American can't see the path we're on and that we're nearly at the end of it. Everybody complains about the world around us, but they just keep voting the same two parties that brought us to this point expecting those parties will fix it. It's like expecting the same two thugs who beat you, robbed you and left you bleeding on the street to turn around and help you.

"Dale McAlpine, a practising (wait for it) Christian, was handing out leaflets in the town of Workington and chit-chatting with shoppers when he was arrested on a “public order” charge by police officer Sam Adams (no relation), a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community outreach officer. Mr. McAlpine said homosexuality is a sin. “I’m gay,” said Officer Adams. Well, it’s still a sin, said Mr. McAlpine. So Officer Adams arrested him for causing distress to Officer Adams."

The irony of tolerance enforced at the point of a gun.

ECONOMY:

Foreclosures hit record. How's that recovery working out for you? Housing starts are rising thanks to Obama stimulus. Can you say new housing bubble? I knew you could.

The European currency crisis might reduce demand for oil, causing prices to fall.

TAX AND SPEND:

It was Bush's spending, not his tax cuts, that created the big deficit.

Remember when I talked about the fatal conceit of central planners? They have to know everything, but they're not gods? Here's a good example:

"The politicians in Northern Europe are in disarray. They don't know what to do. They told the public that Greece needed a $60 billion bailout. Then, overnight, this went to $145 billion. Then, over a weekend, it went to $900 billion. This is the sign of leadership in disarray. They have no idea what they are facing. If they did, they would not have paid any attention to the announcement a year ago that the deficit-to-GDP ratio was 3.7%."

Central planners don't even know what's going on with their governments, let alone with every community, family and individual in a country. It can't be any other way.

"The canary in Europe's coal mine is lying motionless, feet up, in the cage. Europe's politicians are unhappy with the canary. They are determined to replace this canary as soon as possible. "

Great line.


Cato comes up with 10 subsidies to cut that would save $380 billion. Don't expect any politicians to do the same.


FEDERAL RESERVE:


Here's a way the euro might survive:

"Although the euro has lost 16% of its value in the last 120 days, I expect it to survive the sovereign debt crisis. But the euro zone may shrink as Greece and the other fiscally weak governments replace the euro with national currencies that they can inflate whenever convenient. That would leave the euro as the currency of choice for a few strong, wealthy and fiscally conservative nations like Germany – the countries most likely to welcome a gold-backed currency."

That's the problem with predicting stuff like this. Everybody has different ideas, and you never know what specific decisions central planners will make.

HEALTH CARE:

Because of government's cuts to Medicare reimbursement, doctors are dropping out of Medicare.

This is what's going to happen to doctors and nurses:

"There you have it: upon joining the state, the department of resource folks — folks who likely dreamed of careers helping wildlife — became staunch bureaucrats enforcing rules over reason."

Government poisons everything it touches.

"Yuri Maltsev, former economist under Gorbachev, detailed the truths of Soviet medicine in a recent Mises.org article. He wrote of drunken medical professionals roaming the halls of filthy hospitals — hospitals devoid of necessary equipment and supplies. And he wrote of a system where adherence to the rules of the bureaucracy trumped reason and sanity."

I'm sure the same can be found in Britain.

"Your doctor and nurse, no matter how nice today, will become the bureaucracy. They will see you in terms of state rules and regulations. They will push you out into the cold rather than risk having you die on site — and them having to suffer the consequences of a bad report to the central authorities.

Of course, your beloved healthcare professionals will not change overnight from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. No, they will slowly change as the cloud of socialized medicine and accompanying bureaucracy incessantly rots their souls (as it rots our souls as well). It will happen — it has to."

And that's why.


Medicaid, what we're all going to be stuck with soon, provides lower quality care.

POLICE STATE:

We often hear that elections matter, but at best they only barely slow the speed we're traveling down the Road to Serfdom. The British government will now conduct child safety inspections of every household with children under five.

"Inspectors will check whether families have installed smoke alarms, stair gates, locks on medicine cupboards, windows and ovens, and fitted temperature controls to stop bath water getting too hot."

Obama is watching.


Reason criticizes the Supreme Court decision to allow indefinite detention of sex offenders.

"It was bad enough when states began locking people up because of crimes they might commit in the future. Then in 2006 Congress copied the idea, enacting a law that allows the indefinite civil commitment of federal prisoners who have completed their sentences but are deemed "sexually dangerous."

In upholding that policy on Monday, the Supreme Court not only blessed yet another use of psychiatry to escape the safeguards of our criminal justice system by disguising punishment as treatment. It also encouraged Congress to stack one dubious assertion of power on top of another until the tottering tower is tall enough to surmount the fence erected by the Constitution.

Opponents of preventive detention for convicts who have served their time argue that it violates the right to due process, the guarantee against double jeopardy, and the ban on ex post facto laws."

Those seem pretty obvious, but apparently not the Supreme Court. On the plus side (it's not much of a plus side), this can be revisited based on those issues. Why not terrorists next? Or drug users? You can just hear the next person arguing for that saying, "It's a long established principle..."


Follow-up on the story of the SWAT team that arrested a man who was not suspected of a crime, but police thought he might in the future commit a crime.


ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:


There's a big difference between saying state police have the power to arrest illegal immigrants and saying they have the power to demand ID from anybody on a whim and perpetrate violence on those who don't. Boortz intentionally misrepresents the case against the Arizona law again. If cops are checking for ID because of another circumstance, like a traffic stop in this example, and the person turns out to be an illegal immigrant, then deport them. The problem with the Arizona law is that cops can demand ID from anybody based on "reasonable suspicion" which, because judges and prosecutors always side with the cops no matter what, means on a whim. The problem with this law is not that it's discriminatory. It's not. The problem isn't that it targets illegal immigrants; the problem is it targets everybody. It's equal opportunity oppression.


Two Phoenix Suns fans ejected from their seats for wearing shirts that support the new illegal immigration law.


Arizona official threatens to cut off electricity to Los Angeles over boycott. This is funny. Politics is like small children fighting.


FOREIGN POLICY:


South Korea accuses North Korea of sinking warship.


POLITICS:


Obama may be 0-4, but anybody hoping for major change in Washington is delusional. At most, 20 to 30 percent of incumbents will be ousted in November. 70 to 80 percent will be back next year, and the freshmen will quickly fall in line with the rest of the crooks. And anybody hoping just for a Republican sweep is mistaken. As angry as the people are at Democrats, they're still angry at Republicans too, and rightly so. Yet both parties will continue to rule over us after November. The best we can hope for is to slow the bus from racing over the cliff at 100 mph to maybe 95. We'll still going over.


Rand Paul defeated the establishment Republican 59-35 percent. That's a huge landslide, and it goes to show what could happen if the Republican party would embrace libertarian principles, but they won't. They embrace looting just like Democrats.

Ricochet is Facebook for conservatives. I guess it makes sense that social network sites become politicized, but why can't conservatives meet up on Facebook? LvMI is on Facebook.

I'm skeptical that Nick Clegg will be able to carry out this agenda.

Proving that aristocrats refuse to bend to the will of the people, senators propose reforming the filibuster so they can do more damage. The filibuster is one of the few things that limit the damage government does, and that's what the people want. We don't want government doing more, we want government doing less. Keep the filibuster.

How Specter's political scheming cost him the primary. Election summary.

LOCAL:

Dayton school board unanimously takes away school choice from students. Guess what's going to happen.

Central planners to remake downtown Dayton in their own image then wonder why nobody still moves there. If changing some buildings could bring people downtown, private developers would do it. I'm all for getting rid of the dams and opening the river to recreation, but once again that's a problem created by government. The river should have been accessible for recreation all along.

MISC:

NOAA delays hurricane forecast. Is it because they have a monkey on their backs?

In praise of lard.

Our system of government works just like it's supposed to? Really? Is that why the federal government is restricted to the powers granted? I'll grant that the Hamiltonians have won, and I'll also grant that abuse of government is inevitable because it's inherently violent and corrupt, but they won by creating a government that does not work like it's supposed to as laid out in the blue print of the Constitution.

"We (you and I) do not share interests. You have an interest in an issue, as do I. But those interests are never the same. Sure, our individual interests may be similar, and we may even use some of the same words and phrases. But you and I never see things exactly the same. Because of that, melding our various and individual interests into a common set of interests that we share is impossible. Furthermore, it follows that it is impossible to aggregate all the various and individual interests across a congressional district (or some other local, state, or national political boundary) into a single set of interests that we all share.

So it is nonsensical to believe that an elected representative can vote in our (yours and mine) individual best interests, just as it is nonsensical to believe that he can vote in our (whether local, state or national) collective best interest. He cannot. And neither will he. He can and will vote in his own interest, only. We should expect nothing else."

This is true, but if we voted for people who would subordinate their interests to the plain language of the Constitution, we should at least have a government limited by the Constitution. Our problem is we never do that. Instead, we always vote for people who claim they will solve our problems and work in our interest even though that's not possible. It's no coincidence the founders specified in oaths that government officials are to uphold the Constitution, not serve the people. But we're not that wise. We're the problem.

Tar balls found on Key West were not from the Deepwater Horizon spill. Thick oil reaches Louisiana's shore.

This guy shares my incredulity at the optimists.

"As the absurd machinery of government staggers daily towards total breakdown, to be "rescued" however temporarily by this or that stimulus of printed money, I'm hearing the view that the end is near, that freedom is just around the corner, that the collapse of the statist paradigm is almost upon us. Please, not so fast!

I see two errors in this kind of wishful thinking: firstly it seriously underestimates the ability of government to continue in existence for long after its alleged utility has clearly ended, and secondly it assumes without a shred of proof that if and when it does fold, a free society will take its place. If such a collapse is in our future there isn't much anyone can do to stop it, but at least freedom-seekers can avoid those errors and prepare accordingly."

Freedom is not around the corner. Freedom did follow the collapse of Rome, the Soviet Union or any other great empire. Tribalism, warlords and other governments followed. The same will be true here. We need to make sure the government that arises is as weak and benevolent as possible. If we can make sure it has no power to tax, we may get freedom after all. Good, recent examples in this essay.

Apparently BP will be liable for damages in state courts.