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.