Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Establishment economists blame the bad jobs report on the weather.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Somebody else agrees with me that Ben Bernanke is inflating the dollar on purpose because the ruling class prefers to inflate away US debt than to default, and it must do one or the other.

US foreign aid and a western-style central bank with a currency linked to the dollar have produced runaway inflation in Kabul.

"Besides the real-estate boom in Kabul, all these US dollars present opportunities for graft, fraud, and theft of a scale that the pre-invasion natives could have only dreamed. Kabul Bank was, to be blunt, an enormous fraud; as soon as the dollars were deposited they were "loaned" to the politically connected, the cash withdrawn and stuffed into suitcases, then scurried away to foreign locations unknown. This was all taking place with the full knowledge of Western and Afghani regulators, but they were too focused on "the problem of terrorist financing" to care."

The US government would mess up a train wreck.

"In Afghanistan your money is far safer lying at the feet of an alleyway moneychanger than in the vault of any official bank. It is a world so far outside of our conception we may as well have invaded the moon."

Or a spaceship wreck.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Propaganda used to push for the original drug laws:

"Chinese immigrants were partly responsible for spreading opium use in America, so prohibitionists found a receptive audience among whites who feared the prospect of their daughters being lured into the Chinaman’s opium den. Early anti-opium laws in western states explicitly discriminated against Chinese immigrants."

"Absurd fears about cocaine-crazed blacks fueled support for cocaine prohibition. Dr. Hamilton Wright, the leading anti-drug crusader during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration, told Congress that cocaine "is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes," despite a lack of evidence for this or even for the proposition that blacks used cocaine more than whites. Still, Southern Senators especially bought into the widespread myth that black men on cocaine essentially became crazed zombies who were – yes, some people believed this – invulnerable to .32 caliber bullets."

Prohibitionists are still forced to lie to support the war on drugs.

"Professional and industry groups, most notably the American Pharmacological Association, also helped enact drug prohibition. Big pharmaceutical companies did not like competition from patent medications, and pharmacists did not like it that people other than themselves could sell drugs. Regulation of drug distribution, even if it imposed costs on pharmaceutical companies and pharmacists to some extent, could be worthwhile to them if they could bear the costs while their smaller, less diversified competitors could not."

This is why big business always supports new regulations.

"Another likely factor leading to prohibition was, once again, bigotry, this time mostly against Mexicans. Mexicans brought marijuana smoking to the United States when about one million of them migrated here after their country’s 1910 revolution. Some people resented Mexicans anyway, in part for their willingness to work for low wages during the Depression, and marijuana provided another excuse to attack them. Anslinger also testified before Congress that marijuana "causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes.""

And I thought today's liars were shameless.

POLICE STATE:

FBI searches for four men who may have been involved in the 9/11 plot.

Houston mayor says man who leaked tape of police savagely beating a robbery suspect should be prosecuted. To the city government's credit, they've fired and indicted a number of the officers involved. But what this video clearly shows is this is standard operating procedure for Houston police. This isn't a case of a few bad apples. That's why she wants intimidate people who video police brutality.

"Four Houston police officers were indicted for what is seen on the video but on misdemeanor charges of official oppression -- not assault.

"I want to know how in the hell did they do what they did to that boy on that video tape and they only got charged with official oppression," Quanell X said.

Twelve officers were disciplined in the wake of the Holley case, but many have been given their jobs back against the city's will."

Clearly those charges are scandalously light, but most departments never charge officers for brutality.

WAR:

Several detailed issues that show the Afghan war is futile.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The united front of Egypt's protest groups breaks down. It's very scary how much faith the people put in the military. VP Suleiman, while trying to present himself as the leader of a transitional government, has secret police arresting protesters. That's not a good way to win their trust.

"The most notable example is the long disappearance of Wael Ghonim, a Google executive and leader of the young Internet activists who started the revolt. Believed by many to be the anonymous host of the Facebook page that first called for the Jan. 25 protest that kicked off the Egyptian uprising, he wrote that day on his Twitter account, “We got brutally beaten up by police people,” and later, “Sleeping on the streets of Cairo, trying to feel the pain of millions of my fellow Egyptians.”

“Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people,” he wrote two days later. “We are all ready to die.” He disappeared soon after, and after a thorough search of area hospitals, his family and human rights workers have concluded that he was taken by Egyptian security forces."

Yikes.

Revolutionaries never seem to learn that government itself is the problem. They always install a government that ends up becoming as bad as the one they replaced. At least in the US, it took over a century for the government to get worse. Four score and seven years for southerners.

"The truth is, however, that running the bastards out of town is at most only half the battle, because there are always plenty of bastards waiting in the wings to betray the revolution and assume power themselves. In fact, chances are that the new bastards have already made powerful contacts within the military and police and quiet agreements with foreign governments to reinstate amoderated form of the old system even before the old bastard is finally ousted. They will assume the throne and re-enslave the people, perhaps slightly less onerously than before, but enslave them nonetheless."

Slightly less onerously at first.

On the police and military as tools of plunder.

"The ongoing upheaval in Egypt offers a potent illustration of the fact that government police agencies are instruments of plunder, rather than protection – and that protection of person and property is best handled privately. This was made painfully clear after a government-organized mob was unleashed on the peaceful protesters in an effort to create the "chaos" necessary to justify the imposition of "order."

"`Why don't you protect us?' some protesters shouted at the soldiers, who replied they did not have orders to do so and told people to go home."

This on-scene account from Tahrir Square described a coordinated attack by a mob of "pro-government protesters," some of whom were mounted on horses or camels. The assailants – criminal subcontractors in the employ of the regime – used clubs, whips, straight razors, and machetes. They acted with complete impunity, beating and killing at whim. Among their targets were journalists attempting to document the pogrom: Anderson Cooper discovered that international celebrity conferred no protection."

The primary function of military is an excuse for the military-industrial complex to loot us. The primary function of police agencies is to create crime so the people wills surrender more money and power to government. The good intentions of many in the military and the police can't change the essential natures of the organizations.

"When they weren't beating people in the streets or hauling them off to be murdered, plainclothes thugs from Egypt's Central Security Service (or Mukhabarat) brazenly looted private businesses or provided protection to those who did – deputized criminals referred to by one protester on the scene as "prisoners who have been released by that bastard Mubarak in return for their services to beat up civilians." Egyptians not employed in the coercive sector responded by creating private anti-looting patrols."

The truth is revealed when government's facade falls.

An important lesson from the Egyptian protests is the US government is not the US. Americans are victims of their government just like foreigners are.

"In the minds of millions of people all around the world, it associates the U.S. with repression, rather than freedom, which is what the U.S. should – and once did stand for – back when it was America. And unfortunately, people conflate America with the U.S. government, even though they're totally different things – antithetical things, actually."

"We supply their arms. When a protestor picks up a can of teargas, its label reads: "Made in USA." They see U.S. military equipment being used against them. The U.S. government is supporting all these disgusting despots, making enemies of billions of people, turning the U.S. into a police state, and bankrupting the American economy. They're truly multi-talented. But, the average American sees the government as a friend and protector. It's funny – the average Arab may actually be much more politically hip and realistic, and desirous of liberty, than the average American."

Isn't that the truth.

"The amazing thing is that all these Bright Boys in Washington never seem to get a clue. They supported murderous dictators in Latin America until they got thrown out. They supported the Shah of Iran until he got thrown out. They supported Saddam Hussein, and then ended up turning on him themselves. And they still support some of the most brutal regimes in the world today, sowing the seeds of even more suspicion and hatred – how can they be so blind?"

They're not blind at all. Government is a criminal organization that exists to loot the people, foreign and domestic, on behalf of the ruling class, and the US government is the most successful at doing so in history. Once you understand the nature of government, these questions answer themselves.

"And the worst part of it is that there's no need to – nor benefit in – having any involvement whatsoever in any of these places. It's both unnecessary and counterproductive to American interests; it only benefits the people who live within the D.C. beltway, and those who slop at the same trough. You can't impose a new social order on a people from the outside. And even if you could – whoever you put in office, there's going to be some group or another that's going to object, dig in, and hate you for it to boot. You create more future conflict and enemies for yourself."

"I've said for years that the way to defuse and start unwinding the war with Islam is to listen to what Bin Laden said was upsetting those people so much. We should get our troops out of their holy land, stop setting up brutal puppet regimes, and stop supporting Israel. If we did that, and sincerely apologized for our destructive actions and the criminal actions our tax dollars have paid for, a lot of those people would cool off and go back to herding goats, looking for oil, making shish kebabs, or some other pursuit of happiness."

Absolutely.

Like the Soviets before them, the revolutions in the Middle East signal the end of the western ruling class hegemon.

"The Arab liberation revolution will fundamentally change the Middle East. The acceleration of the West's decline will change the world. One outcome will be a surge toward China, Russia and regional powers like Brazil, Turkey and Iran. Another will be a series of international flare-ups stemming from the West's lost deterrence. But the overall outcome will be the collapse of North Atlantic political hegemony not in decades, but in years. When the United States and Europe bury Mubarak now, they are also burying the powers they once were. In Cairo's Tahrir Square, the age of Western hegemony is fading away."

That is absolutely true.

US government plans to push news through China's firewall. The Chinese government won't be happy about that.

MISC:

Rothbard's analysis of the Reagan years. Article calls the Reagan Revolution the Reagan Fraud.

"During his eight years in office, Ronald Reagan increased federal spending by 53 percent, added a quarter of a million new civilian government employees, escalated the War on Drugs, created the "drug czar's office," and lowered the value of your 1980 dollar to 73 cents. His Republican successor, George Herbert Walker Bush, further increased taxes, further increased federal spending, and "managed to knock thirteen cents off the value of your dollar in just four years.""

Reagan talked like a libertarian, but he governed like a Republican. That's why I discovered the libertarian movement at the end of the Reagan years. Analysis shows that Reagan increased spending and taxes, contrary to popular belief. and restricted trade. The reason the economy took off was Fed chairman Volker allowed interest rates to rise so people started saving again.

"It will be objected that Democratic presidents like Johnson and Carter also grew the federal government, that they too increased taxes and spending and regulations, that they too made government steadily more intrusive and the individual steadily less free. It will be objected that the Republican Party is here being singled out for undeserved abuse. But in fact, the situation is far otherwise. As James Ostrowski noted in 2002, "Over the last one hundred years, of the five presidents who presided over the largest domestic spending increases, four were Republicans. Include regulations and foreign policy, as well as budgets approved by a Republican Congress, and a picture begins to emerge of the Republican Party as a reliable engine of government growth."[8]"

Before Obama.

"The years since George Herbert Walker Bush have seen nothing that might make one wish to revise or soften this statement — for George H.W. Bush's son, former Texas governor George W. Bush, who won the presidency in a hotly contested election in the year 2000 and was reelected in 2004, had spent more federal money by the end of his third year in office than Bill Clinton, the "tax-and-spend" Democrat who preceded him, managed to spend in a full eight years."

But that's because Clinton had a Republican Congress for six of those years. Congress controls the purse strings, not the president. When the a single party controls both houses of Congress and the presidency, spending usually runs rampant as that party pushes to expand government's looting apparatus in their favor. When they're mixed, spending is less because the each party resists additional looting that favors the other.

Defense of Jefferson as a classic liberal.