Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Pseudo-services provided by public employee unions are a perfect examples of how government money corrupts everything it touches.

"For decades, researchers have noted that the more money that is spent per pupil in the government schools, the worse is the performance of the students. Similar outcomes are prevalent in all other areas of government "service." As Milton Friedman once wrote, government bureaucracies — especially unionized ones — are like economic black holes where increased "inputs" lead to declining"outputs." The more that is spent on government schools, the less educated are the students. The more that is spent on welfare, the more poverty there is, and so on. This of course is the exact opposite of normal economic life in the private sector, where increased inputs lead to more products and services, not fewer."

The more government money, the more corruption, the worse the pseudo-service.

"Politicians are caught in a political bind by government-employee unions: if they cave in to their wage demands and raise taxes to finance them, then they increase the chances of being kicked out of office themselves in the next election. The "solution" to this dilemma has been to offer government-employee unions moderate wage increases but spectacular pension promises. This allows politicians to pander to the unions but defer the costs to the future, long after the panderers are retired from politics."

How's that working out for us?

The nexus between union and political corruption.

"“Corruption,” says Finch “had been built into the labor movement from its very inception.” The politicians who benefited from union support have always done their best to ignore “five generations of racketeering, Mafia rule, bribery and extortion, job selling, benefit fund theft, and simple thievery, going back to the days of the early-twentieth-century labor czars.” This dates back as well to the creation of the National Labor Relations Board created by Congress in 1935. It is another legacy of the FDR years that have left the nation on the brink of bankruptcy."

They flow from the same source: government's power of coercion, which it extends to unions.

I keep seeing comparisons between protesters in the Middle East and protesters in Wisconsin. This is ridiculous. They are opposites. The protesters in the Middle East are tax payers. They are victims of government theft. They are protesting to reduce the burden of government. The protesters in Wisconsin are tax feeders.They are beneficiaries of government theft. They are protesting to stop the reduction of the burden of government.

ECONOMY:

Obama tries to blame the private sector for lack of jobs by calling on business leaders to provide ideas to create them. This is a gimmick. I have an idea. Cut the size and scope of the federal government in half. Then cut it in half again. Then again. And so on.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Back when QE2 started, several people predicted price inflation would become pretty noticeable in March. It's now the last week in February, and we get this:

"This morning at the store, a fruit drink I usually buy just went from $2.50 to $3.20 in something like two weeks. The apples I bought seem to have jumped 25%. The checkout lady confirmed soaring prices in isle after isle, and I noted that customers in front and behind me were scrambling for coupons and muttering about price hikes. We’ve already known that producers have been repackaging and shrinking their products for 12 months: this is always the first time before price increases. But this only works so long. Finally, the inevitable can’t be put off any longer.CNBC reported yesterday that at a food industry conference, major suppliers were talking about increases of 4 and 5 percent on top of increases at the same level only last month. Past data already show crazy price increases on things like butter (20% YTD), lamb (18.9% YTD), bacon (11.3% YTD), and even potatoes (6% YTD). The explanation is always the same: weather plus rising demand."

Bernanke's done a pretty good job of convincing the accomplice press that his monetary inflation has nothing to do with price inflation, but that's a crock, and Bernanke knows it. He's destroying our currency on purpose. More on inflation. How Bernanke's inflation is fueling Middle Eastern revolution.

POLICE STATE:

TSA to employ new body cavity scanner so they don't have to waste time taking travelers to hospitals to scan them internally. Those TSA agents are always worried about efficiency. TSA agents grope people after they get off their train, including a nine year old boy. Remember when Pistole claimed they wouldn't molest anybody under 12? So much for that. Remember when he claimed TSA was protecting travelers. So much for that too. As usual, the parent subjects her child to this abuse, training them to become good subjects. Why not refuse? What are they going to do since they finished their trip? TSA is intentionally pushing the envelope so they can claim these assaults are the norm and make people who refuse look like extremists.

WAR:

These effects of women in the military were entirely predictable and predicted.

"Although homosexuals serving in the military has been in the news lately, and I even wrote an article on that subject, women serving in the military is a topic that needs to be revisited. More than a dozen women are suing the Pentagon because they say “servicemen get away with rape and other sexual abuse and victims are too often ordered to continue to serve alongside those they say attacked them.”"

The same will happen with gays.

Military uses psy-ops corp against US Senators and others to convince them to increase funding and troops for the war.

"The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts."

One officer who refused to participate was reprimanded.

""My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.""

War and freedom are mutually exclusive.

This article is funny.

"After a decade of embarrassing missteps and disputes, the Pentagon handed the first phase of a job-rich $35-billion contract to Chicago-based Boeing Co. to build a fleet of 179 aerial refueling tankers that carries the promise of work for an estimated 50,000 aerospace employees."

Embarrassing to whom? The aristocrats assumed Boeing was going to win from the start, only to see them lose?

""Boeing was the clear winner," said William J. Lynn, deputy secretary of Defense, in making the announcement. "We went through a process that evaluated war-fighting requirements, evaluated price, evaluated life-cycle costs. And the process yielded the result it did with Boeing winning.""

And politics played no role whatsoever. What a joke. Of course the original decision to use the Airbus was politically motivated too. Everything government does is politically motivated.

MISC:

Paypal shuts down fund raising account of Bradley Manning, the imprisoned WikiLeaks whistleblower.

Zoning authority in Second Life forces virtual mises.org building to move. Zoning authority in Second Life?

Mini-review for Atlas Shrugged:

"Imagine if the producers of As the World Turns and Dirty Sexy Money got together and rewrote your favorite novel for the Facebook generation."

OMG, it sounds terrible. But not so fast...

"It’s not as bad as you think. It’s not bad at all. Dare say, giving the timing, it’s actually important. This isn’t about pleasing Rothbardians, the moldy oldies at Cato or Dr. Peikoff. The good news of Ayn Rand has finally and gratefully been liberated from the professional Objectivists."

How do you sell a classic story about economics and freedom to today's self-absorbed, entitled youth? I have no idea. I hated the book, and it sounds like I'll hate the movie, but I hope the artists pull it off. I'm sure being true to the book would have been a recipe for disaster, so maybe they will pull it off.