Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

The US government wants veto power over top level domain names. No.

SOCIALISM:

Another study has shown that drivers, not the cars, were responsible for Toyota acceleration problems. But since the government owns GM and Chrysler, they're still targets.

ECONOMY:

Financial institutions, agents of the government all, suddenly accepting gold as a top tier asset equivalent to treasuries. The aristocrats are not going to like this. Government can't stand competition.

TAX AND SPEND:

Facing a $1.5 trillion official deficit this year (much larger in reality), Obama's budget proposes $775 million, that's million with an 'M', in cuts. That's just over half of a tenth of a percent. Obama's learning from Paul Ryan.

While Obama pretends to support fiscal responsibility, Biden announces plan to steal $53 billion from Americans and use it to build trains people aren't willing to pay for voluntarily.

"The proposal represents a significant expansion of the $10.5 billion already spent on high-speed rail expansion since Obama entered office, including $8 billion in the 2009 economic stimulus package."

Somebody show me the $10.5 billion in new tracks this produced. That's enough money to redo the tracks between all the big cities around Washington, right? Show me the pictures. I'll bet there aren't any. I bet all that money has disappeared into the pockets of the ruling class.

House Republicans argue over tiny $100 billion in cuts or tinier $35 billion cuts. What a joke.

Congratulations to Rand Paul for standing up and proposing $500 billion in spending cuts. Good for the people of Kentucky. That's still not enough, but he understands that. He's shifting the debate and putting people on the spot. Good for him.

"He was the first Senate Republican to publicly dismiss as insufficient a proposal by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to cut $32 billion from the federal budget for 2011."

Ryan's a fraud. Ryan has been forced to defend why he only wants such tiny cuts. Naturally he blames others. I love it.

62 percent of Americans oppose raising the debt ceiling. Only 27 percent support raising it.

"Seventy-seven percent of likely GOP voters and 64 percent of independent voters said they don’t want the debt ceiling to be raised. Even among Democrats, more oppose raising the ceiling (46 percent) than support it (42 percent)."

Obama says governments must rule by consent, not coercion. Do you think the looters will refuse to raise it?

Because Congress waited so long to extend the Bush tax cuts, the IRS has to print new forms and reprogram computers, meaning the government will hold your money for even longer than usual before sending your refund. How convenient.

The Washington establishment is threatening economist who exposed the municipal debt bubble.

REGULATION:

In a powerful reminder that businesses don't like competition in free markets, small businesses around the country are asking government to license them in order to exclude competitors from their markets. Look how well it's worked for doctors and how badly it's worked for patients, so why not?

EDUCATION:

Gary North encourages mothers who have home-schooled children to help others by creating online curricula.

HEALTH CARE:

How the FDA kills Americans.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Rumor has it Kieth Olbermann will join Al Gore's network. No more rumor. Kieth Olbermann is officially a broadcaster for and partner with Al Gore. I bet he likes being Al Gore's oral organ.

The environmentalists show their true colors again, celebrating Genghis Khan as the most green ruler in history because he killed so many people which enabled the land to return to a natural state. Some of these Greens are psychos, they hate their fellow men, wish they were dead, and would kill us if they had the power, but you can bet they don't plan to commit suicide to make the planet more natural.

FOREIGN POLICY:

It looks like Sudan will accept the seccession of South Sudan, creating a new country. I'm surprised. They're ruling class is definitely more enlightened than ours.

Egyptian protesters mass for the biggest protest yet. On Egypt:

"The Order of the Nile, First Class with Oak Clusters, for rightwing loopiness goes to the deeply confused Glenn Beck who raved about a Communist-Muslim Brotherhood plot backed by the evil Chinese and American liberals to impose an Islamic Caliphate on Egypt. He must have been drinking green Koolaid from barmy televangelist Rev. John Hagee who warns us that a Muslim lurks under every mattress."

I happened to catch a couple of minutes of Beck that day, and he was off his rocker. He should stick to exposing Obama, not commentating on foreign policy.

"America’s 1950’s red hysteria has been transmuted in 2011 into galloping Islamophobia. Israel’s partisans poured oil on the fires by thundering about the supposed dangers of the stodgy, sclerotic Muslim Brotherhood and demanded the US shore up President Husni Mubarak, Israel’s most important Mideast ally. Israel never misses a chance to proclaim itself the Mideast’s only democracy, yet won’t abide the birth of real democracy next door in Egypt."

What a fantastic expose of hypocrisy. Why is Israel the only democracy in the Middle East? Because the US government props up tyrants. But because Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, the US must prop up tyrants. That's some self-serving, circular reasoning.

"Gen. Suleiman [now VP and the man the US government hopes becomes Egypt's next dictator] ran Egypt’s notoriously brutal secret police for a decade. He organized the torture of alleged terrorism suspects sent by the US to Egypt and suspected opponents of Mubarak’s dictatorship. How ironic it is to see Sudan’s leader, Gen. Omar Bashir, charged with crimes against humanity while Egypt’s chief torturer is lauded in North America."

More hypocrisy. Eric Margolis predicted the rebellion in Egypt last April.

"Washington’s powerful Israel Lobby dominates Congress and thus US food aid to Egypt. Sadat and Mubarak gave Israel decisive influence over Egypt’s policies in exchange for food aid and billions of dollars, a fact that enrages Egypt’s Islamists and nationalists. 

Mubarak’s Egypt is the cornerstone of America’s Mideast Raj (dominion). Egypt’s 469,000-man armed forces, 397,000 paramilitary police, and ferocious secret police keep the regime in power and crush all dissent. 

 Though large, Egypt’s military is starved by Washington of modern weapons, ammo, and spare parts so it cannot war against Israel. Its sole function is keeping the US-backed regime in power."

That worked great for 30 years.

POLICE STATE:

In a discussion about law and order arising without the state, the author writes:

"Litigants do not recognize and submit to the judgments of the courts because they are final in some fantastic sense completely detached from anything actually occurring in our current legal system. Rather, individuals defer to judgments of courts to the degree that those decisions are thought to be appropriately undergirded by cogent reasoning and by referral to respected and controlling legal authority. It is society's trust in the institutions that occasions acquiescence to the law."

What a bunch of baloney. Litigants defer because if they don't the state will crush them like a bug. They defer because of the threat of violence, not because the judgment is appropriate. Most Supreme Court decisions are obviously wrong and unconstitutional, yet people defer because if they don't, the government will seize all their property and imprison them. Maybe this author intended this to describe how courts might work in a society without the state, but the tense of his verbs is wrong if so. The idea of competing law, legal systems and courts, in which the best (read most fair) would rise to the top is an interesting idea, but I don't know if that would work for a system that is by definition coercive.

Government continues to pay the salary of police officer convicted of threatening prisoners with a taser.

POLITICS:

Society has two classes: the those who pay for government intervention and those who benefit from it.

"It is true that on the free market there are no clashes of class or group interest; all participants benefit from the market and therefore all their interests are in harmony.

But the matter changes drastically, Mises points out, when we move to the intervention of government. For that very intervention necessarily creates conflict between those classes of people who are benefited or privileged by the State and those who are burdened by it."

I'm in the burdened class like most everybody else.

Obama's Justice Department refuses to prosecute fraud in Americorps. That's Obama's army, so of course nobody will get prosecuted.

That old question comes up again: is the state natural to us? My response:

"I think the government grows out of the familial instinct. Dads use force against children. The first governments were clan leaders of extended families, then as clans raided nearby clans, probably interrelated, they became extended clans governed by force. I have no doubt that predatory government is as much a product of instinct as the will to freedom. If it wasn't, people would have abolished it long ago."

Why else would people continually, throughout civilization, empower aristocrats to steal from them? It's not rational.

Literal witchhunt in Romania.

"The government doesn’t have real solutions, so it invents problems. This is the government that this country deserves."

That's true of every government and country.

Conservative Democrats in the deep south switching to Republicans. This is presented as good news for Republicans, but what it really means is Republicans continue to become more like Democrats every day. There's not a nickel's worth of difference between the two parties, and it gets smaller every day. Another data point: Democrats mock Republicans for lack of agenda, i.e., they're not cutting anything.

MISC:

LG claims patent infringement and tries to get Playstation 3 banned from US market in retaliation for Sony suing LG over patent infringement in smartphones. Maybe government can uphold all patents and take us back to the stone age faster immediately instead of slowly, as it has been doing.