The FCC is ready to pass net neutrality regulations. This is a good reminder that the political circus in Washington is meaningless in day to day affairs. The bureaucrats do what they're supposed to, and what they're supposed to do is loot the people on behalf of the aristocrats regardless of which party is in power.
ECONOMY:
How Japan's economic problems are different than ours.
"The Federal Reserve System is playing the role of the official counterfeiter. It is passing the fiat money to the Treasury, or says it will. This is not Japan's scenario. The Bank of Japan did not inflate the yen sharply. This is why price inflation did not take place. Neither did price deflation. For 16 years, Japan's price level has remained close to flat.
Japan's problem has been the commercial banks' unwillingness to admit that they made bad loans in the second half of the 1980s. They refuse to write down those loans. But they also refuse to lend to small businesses. So, there has been little economic growth. This is the infamous Japan syndrome or Japan malaise. There is not enough capital to fund new, innovative businesses. Government bonds are absorbing people's savings.
The stagnation of the Japanese economy has been the result of the 1980s bubble, followed by large, paralyzed banks using any profits to pay down old loans. This has stifled innovation in Japan. It has protected the banks."It still looks like inflation for us. That's a certainty since Bernanke won't stop until he gets inflation.
"I think we are in a Japan-like scenario. The Federal Reserve's promise to inflate does point to more price inflation, but our banks are like Japan's: not lending. This keeps price inflation at bay.
At some point, we will move out of Japan's model and into price inflation. But this will not happen until bankers lose their fear. There is no sign of this yet."But commodities are already rising. Price inflation that the Fed won't be able to ignore is in the pipeline. Shadowstats.com shows inflation above four percent already. It's going higher.
TAX AND SPEND:
The parallels between taxation and slavery.
"The choice today is quite clear. It is between peace, freedom and prosperity on the one hand, taxation, tyranny and impoverishment on the other. Faced with this fundamental choice, we should see clearly that what we desperately need to do is not limit or reform the tax system, but to abolish it – and breathe the fresh, clean air of freedom."Yes! More.
It looks like municipal bonds may be crashing.
GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:
Solar cycle 24 continues to be unusually weak, and no spots were seen on the sun yesterday. This further we advance into solar cycle 24, the more it looks like we're in for repeat of the nasty Dalton Minimum.
Homeland Security to fight climate change in the interest of environmental justice. Right.
Remember when Obama forced BP to set up a $20 billion slush fund for his administration to use to buy votes ostensibly to insure efficient compensation for people's losses due to the oil spill? That worked about as well as everything else government does.
"Feinberg urged people who are upset with their emergency payments to apply again for a final payment as an alternative to filing a lawsuit that could drag on for years."Absolutely. If the government didn't give you enough of other's people's money to buy your vote for Obama the first time, just refile, and the government will give you more of other people's money to insure they buy your vote. If you have to file a lawsuit, that means you probably won't vote for Obama in 2012, and his administration doesn't want that.
It snowed in Australia yesterday. That would be like it snowing here on June 19. That's global warming for you.
POLICE STATE:
TSA shuts down airport over a computer monitor.
The inhumane manor in which whistle-blower Bradley Manning is being imprisoned shows how our government and the people have changed for the worse since 9/11.
Because the function of government is control others, to force them to do things against their will or to force them to not do things they want to do, politicians can't have integrity, and integrity is stripped from bureaucrats and agents as well.
"As F.A. Hayek noted accurately in his book, The Road to Serfdom, "the worst get on top." What attracts the worst to the State apparatus are the power of compulsion that agents of the State have over others, the power of monopoly that restricts the rights of others, and the adulation (and in some cases idolatry) toward agents of the State from the masses."
The ones who are most successful at looting the people and forcing them to act against their own will rise to the top because that's the only thing a system based on violence and lies can reward. Here's why democracies become so bad:
"Free entry is not always good. Free entry and competition in the production of goods is good, but free competition in the production of bads is not. Free entry into the business of torturing and killing innocents, or free competition in counterfeiting or swindling, for instance, is not good; it is worse than bad. So what sort of "business" is government? Answer: it is not a customary producer of goods sold to voluntary consumers. Rather, it is a "business" engaged in theft and expropriation – by means of taxes and counterfeiting – and the fencing of stolen goods. Hence, free entry into government does not improve something good. Indeed, it makes matters worse than bad, i.e., it improves evil."
They're not worse than communism, but the US rapidly approaching the oppression level of a communist country.
"In his discussion of the WikiLeaks story and the cooperation with the government of the whistleblower website’s business associates Amazon.com, Mastercard and Paypal, Hornberger brings up the Bush Administration’s 2001 request of telecommunications companies to provide confidential information about their customers to help the NSA’s unconstitutional domestic spying program. The only one who didn’t cooperate with the request was Joseph Nacchio of Qwest Communcations. Shortly thereafter, the government indicted and then convicted Nacchio of "insider trading" laws."
Government payback. Insider trading laws are unconstitutional anyway.
"It is of great irony – well, hypocrisy is a better word – that such a counter-productive "insider trading" persecution of private, innocent individuals who are not committing any acts of theft or fraud, comes from the same federal government many of whose participants embrace the revolving door between government monopolies and privileged corporate interests. Former Federal Reserve employees’ informing their post-Fed private sector clients of the inside details of Fed meetings and decisions, long before such information becomes public knowledge, is but one example."
...
"So how can those who are driven toward State power possibly have integrity when the very apparatus over which they want control is inherently corrupting? Obviously, there have been plenty of those in the business sector who have shown a lack of integrity and have been corrupt, but the genuine business sector does not have the power of compulsion over others, the power to be above the law as does the compulsory government sector. And by genuine business sector, I mean that which is not tied to the State apparatus through "crony capitalism," or corporatism.
It is thus nearly impossible to expect even the most honest individual to grab hold of monopolistic governmental powers, legislatively, militarily or otherwise, and expect one’s integrity to remain intact. There are some exceptions, of course."
Thank goodness for Ron Paul as an example. He continues to win office in landslides despite (or because of) his principled stand for freedom. The lesson to be learned is that others could do the same in other districts, but they choose not to.
WAR:
As if waging hot wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan plus lower level wars elsewhere wasn't enough, the military wants to escalate the war in Pakistan. I guess they won't be happy until we've turned the Pakistani government into an enemy that wants to kill Americans too.
POLITICS:
Because Ron Paul suddenly has a position of power as chairman of the committee overseeing the Fed, the left will slander him aggressively. This is probably a great tactic on their part because it will split Republicans with some defending him and some wanting to replace him with an establishment Republican. Krugman is leading the attacks.
LOCAL:
Kettering Health Network insures it will get favorable treatment from the government by hiring Rep. Turner's wife.
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