Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Color coded map of bankruptcy filings per capita by county from 2006 to 2010. Wow. They're going through the roof.

TAX AND SPEND:

Because we allow the government to continue to rob us blind, seven of the top 10 richest counties now surround Washington D.C. Soon 10 of the top 10 will.

The truth about the recommendations from the co-chairs of Obama's deficit panel is coming out: there are spending cuts. There are reductions in the rate of spending increases, and they calling those spending increases spending cuts. And yet Nancy Pelosi hates it.

Remember when leftists hated Americans for our conspicuous consumption? President Obama claims the greatest contribution the US makes to the world economy is spending. I'm not kidding.

"That is how the president explained things to skeptical (or make thatoutraged and rebellious) fellow leaders in the Group of 20. "The United States will do its part to restore strong growth, reduce economic imbalances and calm markets," he explained in a letter prior to the G-20 meeting beginning on Thursday in Seoul, Korea. "A strong recovery that creates jobs, income and spending [emphasis added] is the most important contribution that the United States can make to the global recovery.""

That's quite the turnaround. You have to produce before you can consume. Obama hates that.

What's wrong with this statement?

""Federal funding has been a central component of public radio stations’ ability to serve audiences across the country," NPR said in a statement. "It’s imperative for funding to continue to ensure that this essential tool of democracy survives and thrives well into the future.""

If NPR is so valuable, why can't it exist in a system of voluntary exchange? If NPR is so valuable, why won't people fund it through voluntary contributions?

For 20 years I've said the greatest threat to America is the government bankrupting us all, but I've realized in the last couple of years the government has become far more dangerous than that. It may well begin killing us in earnest as it goes bankrupt. In the last couple of years government has rapidly escalated its overt violence against the people and put in place the infrastructure to kill us on a massive scale. Very similar to the Wiemar Republic. I don't know how many times I've made the case that the war on terror is going to end because we can't fund it, the same as our crazy military and entitlement spending are going to end because we can't fund them, but it's nice to see somebody else explicitly make that point.

"The irony is that the former will be the undoing  of the latter: the destruction of the dollar means the implosion of the American empire, and the relegation of the US to what used to be called – in more politically incorrect times – a “Third World” nation."

The question is if we'll stay that way. Will Americans empower a Nazi-like government to follow the collapse as the Germans did, or will we re-embrace our founding principles and reject big-government? Because of the government-worship of liberals and conservatives, it seems a Nazi-like government is our future. I sure hope the people enlighten themselves and fast so that doesn't happen. MacArthur definitely got this right:

""Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense…. Indeed, it is a part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.”"

And Garet Garrett too:

""The bald interpretation of General MacArthur’s words is this. War becomes an instrument of domestic policy. Among the control mechanisms on the government’s panel board now is a dial marked War. It may be set to increase or decrease the tempo of military expenditures, as the planners decide that what the economy needs is a little more inflation or a little less – but of course never any deflation. And whereas it was foreseen that when Executive Government is resolved to control the economy it will come to have a vested interest in the power of inflation, so now we may perceive that it will come also to have a kind of proprietary interest in the institution of perpetual war.""

"While the Fed is the central issue here, and the tea partiers who have recently enjoyed such electoral success seem amenable to taking up this fight, what they don’t yet get is that all government spending – including military spending – must be put on the table.  The “big government conservatives,” such as Bill Kristol, fully understand that this is where the logic of the tea partiers is leading the movement – and they’re determined to head them off at the pass by scaring them into silence."

Let's hope that's true.

REGULATION:

In order to raise more revenue and cost us more money, the IRS is requiring every tax preparer to purchase a license from them. That way the IRS gets more money, the cost of the license is passed on to the people, and the number of tax preparers falls, further driving up prices. Thanks government.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

CNN Money previews the upcoming showdown between Ben Bernanke and presumptive Fed oversight chairman Ron Paul, calling Paul Ben Bernanke's worst nightmare. I hope Republicans don't screw Paul out of that chairmanship.

Pat Buchanan is suddenly concerned about the Fed, and he gets it mostly right.

"China is being denounced for manipulating its currency when Beijing is adhering to a strict dollar-renminbi exchange rate, while our Fed is manipulating the dollar price to seek competitive advantage."

Too bad he wasn't so concerned when Greenspan was creating this mess.

"In four years, the American people have delivered three straight votes of no confidence in the U.S. government. The Fed, however, retains a confidence that it does not deserve, when one considers that, when it was created in 1913, a $20 bill could be exchanged for a $20 gold piece."

Boy, isn't that the truth. But Buchanan blows it at the end:

"If Bernanke's inflation does not generate growth, confidence in the Fed will also vanish. Then a crisis of capitalism will be at hand.

Historians will not deal kindly with the men who traded the horse of U.S. economic nationalism for the rabbit of the Global Economy."

The Fed has nothing to do with capitalism. It's a socialist monopoly. And our problems have nothing to do with a global economy. A global economy is to our benefit. Our problems are strictly the product of the loss of economic freedom in America.

The dollar today buys about 1/10th of the gold it bought thirty years ago. If debasing the currency is so good for the economy, where are the benefits?

Why more economists are calling for a return to the gold standard.

"The original Bretton Woods system — so named because of the location of the meetings that established it in 1944 — governed international monetary arrangements in the postwar era until Richard Nixon's fateful decision to close the gold window in 1971.

Under the Bretton Woods agreement, other nations would use US dollars as their "reserves." The Bank of England, Bank of France, etc., would issue their own domestic currencies, but would maintain stockpiles of US dollars with which they could regulate the value of their own currencies. If the British pound sterling began to depreciate against the US dollar, for example, then the Bank of England could enter the foreign-exchange market and use some of its dollar holdings to "buy pounds," thus bringing the value of the pound back within target. In this way, investors across the globe could feel comfortable with their British financial holdings, because the pound was tied to the dollar.

Note the tremendously advantageous position that the Bretton Woods system assigned to the United States. As issuer of the world's reserve currency, the United States had a very captive market. If the Bank of England wanted to increase its dollar reserves by another $1 million, then ultimately Great Britain had to sell $1 million worth of goods and services to Americans in order to earn the dollars. The Bretton Woods system effectively expanded the scope for US inflation to the entire world, thus magnifying the benefits to those who controlled the American printing press."

This is why the credit crisis in the US produced a world-wide crisis. This is also why countries are developing alternatives to using the dollar as the world's reserve currency. I often talk about whether aristocrats like Bernanke and Obama are stupid or evil, destroying America through ignorance or intentionally, but I haven't mentioned the Amero in a while. But Murphy hints at that possibility:

"As Zoellick is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a participant in the notoriousBilderberg meetings, some analysts are understandably suspicious of his motives. After all, if powerful people were trying to introduce a regional currency to replace the dollar — in the same way that the euro has supplanted the traditional European currencies — then it would be necessary to first wreck the dollar. In its place, it would be very tempting to offer a new currency with a tie to gold.

In this light, what appear to be "inexplicable" and contradictory actions by the Federal Reserve and other powerful figures would make perfect sense."

So is that what Bernanke and company are up to?

HEALTH CARE:

The insurance industry and Big Pharma don't want Obamacare repealed because Obamacare buys them off with big subsidies. And while Obamacare will force many smaller companies out of business, the big ones will consolidate the market, raise prices and lower quality of service. The American people will be so miserable with the results, it will pave the way for the government to implement full-blown socialized medicine.

Medicine in Germany from 1918-1945.

"But at the beginning of the twentieth century the desire to create a more scientific medical practice and research had already raised the issues of euthanasia, eugenics, and medical experimentation on human subjects. In addition, the increasing involvement of the German government in medical care and funding medical research established the government-medical complex that the National Socialists later used to execute their extermination policies."

The US is not like the Nazis now, but we're very similar to the Weimar Republic the collapse of which ushered in the Nazis.

"Where traditional individual ethics and Christian charity had once stood, the reformers posited a collective ethic for the benefit of the general population. Private charity and welfare were nationalized. The mentally ill, for example, having been literally released from their chains in the nineteenth century and placed in local communities and boarding houses in regular contact with others (the so-called “moral therapy”), were returned to state institutions to become the ultimate victims of state “solutions.”

With the world economic crisis of 1929, welfare state expenditures had to be reduced for housing, nutrition, support payments, recreation and rehabilitation, and maternal and child health. What remained of the humanistic goals of reform were state mechanisms for inspection and regulation of public health and medical practice. Economic efficiency became the major concern, and health care became primarily a question of cost-benefit analysis. Under the socialist policies of the period, this analysis was necessarily applied to the selection of strong persons, deemed worthy of support, and the elimination of weak and “unproductive” people. The scientific underpinning of cost-benefit analyses to political medical care was provided by the new fields of genetics and eugenics."

Tell me that doesn't sound like modern America.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Excerpts from a number of articles this week alone refuting the global warming fraud. Truth is winning out.

Remember when CFCs were supposedly creating a hole in the ozone that would kill us all? Well they banned CFCs, but the ozone hole is unchanged. That's because it's natural. It had been there long before, but people hadn't detected it before. The CFC ban is another enviromarxist boondoggle. But as with all things government, they tell us, just give the ban more time, and it will fix everything, but nothing ever gets fixed.

POLICE STATE:

More mainstream criticism of the TSA:

"“We spend my child’s whole life telling him that only mom, dad and a doctor can touch you in your private area, and now we have to add TSA agent and that’s just wrong,” he told Reuters. “At some point the terrorists have won.”"

That's from a father who claims to be a Washington lobbyist. When the lessor members of the ruling class start complaining, things will change. But only for them. Not for the rest of us.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Obama fails to obtain two agreements he went on this Asian trip to get.

"President Barack Obama failed to reach agreement on two international deals to help spur the U.S. economy, unexpected setbacks on an Asia trip that was supposed to emphasize his stature abroad and change the subject from last week’s electoral drubbing."

What's wrong with this sentence?

"Obama was unable to achieve a free trade agreement with South Korea, vowing to keep talking to get a better deal for U.S. auto makers."

Free trade agreements don't have deals for US automakers. Free trade agreement is another term we need to take back the definition of.

"And after meeting with the leaders of Germany and China, he continued to meet resistance from the two countries about reducing their trade surpluses with the U.S. to give a boost to American manufacturing, putting the best face on a compromise that only calls for the goal of lowering them."

This is another example of managed trade, not free trade. Why are they pretending Obama supports free trade? The left doesn't support free trade.

POLITICS:

People who don't understand the nature of government are surprised that top Sarah Palin aid is also paid by George Soros. When the cameras are off, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties.

Sarah Palin's Alaska: reality show and campaign ad.

MISC:

So now the politically correct three little pigs build their homes from recycled material, have a miscommunication with the wolf, the wolf ends up apologizing and moves in with them.

"A new version of the story is now popping up in the classroom as part of the the fourth grade reading textbook Storytown: Winning Catch 4. In that book’s version, the wolf has a sudden heart attack while trying to blow down the third little pig’s adobe house. The three little pigs rush to his aid, save him, and while trying to flee from him once recovered, realize that the whole “huff and puff and blow your house down” thing was a simple “lack of communication”: the wolf actually wanted to move in with the pigs and was testing each abode’s structural security."

We're living in a politically correct nightmare. "It's a trap" is right.

Wild hippo rescues two baby animals separated from their mothers while crossing a fast-moving river.

Claim that US taxpayers are funding Planned Parenthood teaching in Russia.

"Seana Cranston, former Ron Paul Staffer currently at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, has published an important article exposing the US taxpayer-funded export of pornographic sex guides to Russian children via a USAID-sponsored Planned Parenthood program. Titled “Healthy, Happy and Hot,” this graphic sex guide translated into Russian and aimed at children urges Russia’s youngsters to, as Seana describes it, experiment with “casual sex with multiple partners, as well as oral, anal, and homosexual sex.” And if a pregnancy should happen to result from that hodgepodge of activity, it urges the children to “find out whether there are any (family planning) centers near to you where you can go without needing the permission of your parents or guardians.”"

Crazy.

Firefighters watch house burn because home owner had forgotten to mail his government firefighting fee. Government has transformed firefighters into bureaucrats, but some people blame the free market.