Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Mozilla proposes "Do not track" header for HTTP. I would love it if there was a way to get all the convenience of the web without anybody tracking my activity, but and I'm happy to see this debate, but this won't work. Nobody would honor it if they didn't have to. The solution is contracts. And no matter what we do, government won't honor it.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Another hidden cost of inflation: reduced quality and quantity of products. Businesses hate to raise prices, so whenever possible, they reduce the ingredients in the products instead.

In praise of When Money Dies, which explains how the Weimar Republic destroyed its currency, enabling the Nazis to gain power, and it looks like Ben Bernanke and his Fed accomplices are just as stupid or evil today.

"Hard as it may be to believe, Fergusson presents a compelling argument that the central bankers of Europe did not believe that the quantity of money had anything to do with the price level. And I suppose you think that our modern Fed rulers understand at least this much. Well, if they did they would not inflate the money supply; they would not issue statements that they are pursuing a 2 percent inflation rate in order to achieve full employment."

I don't know about that. Bernanke has clearly stated his intention to inflate the money supply in order to raise prices by two percent per year. I'm still going with evil.

"By the way, full employment was one of the main justifications for the Reichsbank's inflationist monetary policies. So nothing has changed. Central bankers still believe that monetary policy can lower the unemployment rate.

We see what happened in Weimar Germany. When a little monetary inflation failed to cure all ills, a little stronger dose was prescribed, and then stronger and stronger doses until chaos reigned. Today's pronouncements are no different."

Exactly, and Ben Bernanke is a student of the Great Depression. It's inconceivable that he doesn't know the history of the Weimar Republic. He's doing our currency on purpose.

"But the most important conclusion that one can draw from the great German hyperinflation experience is that money expansion is a prelude to and an enabler of war. The demise of the gold standard is the common thread that underlies the belligerency of the European powers around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. (America lagged behind somewhat, but only somewhat.)"

This seems like a stretch because there were no shortages of wars before the twentieth century, but even in the nineteenth century and earlier, government suspended specie payment to fund wars.

"The ability to print money in unlimited quantities is why the 20th century was the most brutally destructive in history."

So the idea is that because governments abolished the gold standard as an institution en mass, more war was the result. I'm still not sure he's got cause and effect right. I think it's more likely that the desire to wage all-out war led to abolishing the gold standard as an institution, not vice-versa. But it doesn't really matter. If government has no power over the money supply, it can't abolish it.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

This is a great point:

"You see, the real problem is not as much Americans’ dependence on foreign oil as it is Americans’ dependence on our government’s control over our energy needs."

Exactly. We're surrounded by energy resources, but our own government won't let us develop them.

"The American people need to forget about whether or not the federal government approves of states’ drilling for oil and gas, and the states need to just do it anyway. The inhabitants of each of the U.S. states have a God-given right to explore, discover and utilize any natural resources that exist on or within their lands. If the feds begin to fine states that disobey federal energy and environmental regulations, or send in the military to force states to stop drilling or send defiant citizens and businessmen to jail, then the states need to take the issue to the Supreme Court, and/or declare their Tenth Amendment rights to allow access to energy resources on their own lands to their inhabitants, whose means of livelihoods the federal government has been obstructing."

As always the government stops us from improving our lives with threats of violence. Forget going to the Supreme Court. States need to remind the federal government that its their agent, not vice-versa.

POLICE STATE:

Russian terrorists show the worthlessness of TSA by blowing up bomb in airport.

Governments are using drones over America, and police are getting into the act. We've known this was coming for four years, we allowed it happen, but now we're suddenly surprised? Give me a break.

POLITICS:

Appeal court pulls Rahm Emanuel from the Chicago mayorial ballot because he didn't live in Chicago for the last year.

LOCAL:

Here come higher tax bills.

McLin funeral home, local business of the late, former state representative C.J. McLin, father of former Dayton mayor Rhine McLin, is operating without a license. The license was revoked for failure to pay taxes. This is another example of the ubiquitous corruption of the ruling class. They raise taxes on us because they don't pay them. They force us to get licensed because they don't bother. We do live in two Americas. The ruling class which is above the law and the rest of us who are oppressed by the law. The other thing this shows is that the real reason licenses exist is for the aristocrats to wield them as a weapon against businesses. This would and should be a non-story except government steals our money and threatens us with violence through regulations and licenses.

MISC:

Here's another example of government money corrupting science.

"More than 60% of American households have a pet, and depending on the survey, 14% to 62% let their dogs and cats sleep with them. That can be dangerous, says Bruno Chomel, a professor at theUniversity of California-Davis school of veterinary medicine."

14 percent or 62 percent. That's 48 percent error. Only government could produce that kind of error.

This cold fusion claim not only creates energy, it's reminiscent of alchemy because it transforms nickel into more valuable copper.

Strength training promotes growth of brain cells but over-training can reduce brainpower later in life.

A specific instance of how a so-called historian tried to re-write history by changing the date on a document in the national archives to fit his agenda. Most historians aren't this brazen, but they all re-write history to fit their agendas.