Free kibbles

ECONOMICS:

After NBER's declaration that the recession ended in June 2009, Robert Murphy is embarrassed to be a professional economist.

REGULATION:

The head of the NSA wants to partition the internet into a secure government section. Frankly, I'd love to have the government off the regular internet, but nothing good can come from this proposal.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Arctic sea ice, you know the sea ice that the global warming frauds claim is disappearing, covers a greater extent of the earth than it did through most of the last 9,000 years. Skeptics 9,000. Frauds 0. But they have all the government money stolen from us at the point of a gun, so they won't give up.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Iran suffers from highly sophisticated internet worm that targeted its infrastructure like power plants. Why is anybody surprised Ahmadinejad blames capitalism for poverty? Iran has been a socialist state for decades.

POLITICS:

Why government occasionally sacrifices one of their own:

"Regarding this scandal with the city of Bell, CA, I confess that I don’t know all of the details, but I do know that the City Manager was collecting something like an $800,000 salary.  I haven’t bothered with the fuss because I would expect nothing less from a professional criminal class. Moreover, while this is outrageous, I believe it is such a drop in the bucket compared to the far bigger rackets that go on with the military-industrial-corporation complex run out of Washington.

That said, when I hear that one of the Bell people could be jailed for up to 58 years for his antics, I can’t help but think of a passage from Franz Oppenheimer in The State:

“When, pursuant to their own ideals of justice, the aristocrats as a social group execute one of their own class for murder or robbery, for having exceeded the bounds of permitted exploitation, the thanks and the joy of the subjects are even more heartfelt than after victory over alien foes.”"

Reminds me of Blago too, except he didn't do anything beyond the norm. He was sacrificed because of his ties to Obama.

Hayek exposes the myth that compromise is a good thing. Compromise is a tool aristocrats use to loot ever more wealth and power from the people.

Interesting contrast between revolutionary Declaration of Independence and Republicans' government worshiping pledge to America. Republican pledge with full text. I can't believe they made something this complex. This looks like a propaganda piece made to influence other aristocrats, not normal Americans. Why not 10 bullet items every American  could digest in seconds? This is a gimmick. They have no intention of following it if they gain power.

MEDIA:

Newsweek likes Boehner because

"Boehner’s principles didn’t change at the turn of the century; he’s always been a Chamber of Commerce conservative. But a new administration meant new expectations, and a different set of incentives. Under Clinton, Boehner’s job was to oppose the White House; under Bush, his job was to get stuff done. As a man who made his money selling plastics, Boehner seems to enjoy the latter role more—which is why he broke with many of his fellow fiscal conservatives and backed Dubya on NCLB, Medicare Part D, and TARP, and, more recently, acknowledged reality on the Bush tax cuts. “John is, more than anything, a dealmaker,” says Republican consultant Kevin Madden, a former Boehner spokesman. “He uses his personal and political power to make deals.” (Boehner declined to speak to NEWSWEEK for this article.)"

That's why I don't like him.