Free kibbles

STATES RIGHT:

Texas House passes bill to make TSA groping illegal. Let's see if it becomes law.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

As I suspected, housing is the factor making the CPI look better than it really is.

"Also of interest in the April numbers is that if you subtract housing, which makes up over 40% of the weight of the CPI, then prices increased 4.2 percent — twice Bernanke’s measure of stability."

This is a fraud. House payments in general don't change. And it makes no sense to include rent in the general CPI because many people don't rent. This is another example of how the government manipulates statistics to make itself look better.

"This touches upon what is one of the less recognized features of current inflation trends:  the regressive nature of these prices increases.  If you rent, then you’ve seen costs increase more than if you own.  If you mostly eat at home, then you’ve seen prices increase more than if you dine out a lot.  If you have a lot of leisure time, the you’ve gained by the decrease in reaction prices.  While I don’t think one’s position on inflation should be driven purely by distributional concerns, the fact that working middle-income households have been hit harder by recent inflation trends than higher-income households should cut against the claims that inflation is somehow good for the poor or working class."

I don't know why anybody would have had that idea in the first place.

HEALTH CARE:

Where I have heard this before?

"If “Mandate Mitt” once again clings to his untenable position that RomneyCare is good but ObamaCare is bad, he will reinforce the perception that he has no principles and will say anything to get elected."

That's exactly what I wrote a few days ago. That's exactly what he did.

"If Republicans pick Romney as their standard-bearer, they will be choosing someone who, as the Wall Street Journal editorializes, is either a leftist on health care, too clueless to realize the Left played him for a fool, or so unprincipled that he doesn’t care.  The Obama campaign would like nothing more.  The attack ads write themselves.  Romney would become a laughingstock — if he isn’t already — and would drag the ObamaCare-repeal effort down with him."

I don't think Romney has a chance.

Vermont to implement a single-payer health care system. Yikes.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

This article presents a phony debate: pay taxes on gas or by the mile. This isn't an either-or situation. They'll never abolish gas taxes. They just want to add a mileage tax.

Article claims Obama will allow more drilling for oil. I'm skeptical. I bet this was just talk and there will be no significant change in policy.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Ohio government pushing people onto heroin. As always, the government non-solution to the government-created problem is more force.

WAR:

On the sudden declaration that Pakistan should be the new target in the war on terror:

"Now that bin Laden is dead, and the vast intelligence cache scooped up by the raiders effectively dismantles al-Qaeda as an effective international fighting force, the US government is desperately scrambling to find a replacement – a new bogeyman who will scare the American people into going along with the War Party’s plans."

God forbid we actually have peace.

Now we get another story of bin Laden's execution.

"In the main building, no shots were fired even though the occupants had access to a stash of weapons.
The first glimpse of the most wanted man in the world came when Bin Laden emerged onto a third-floor landing dressed in a tan robe and white undershirt.
Navy SEALs fired at him, but missed, and then chased him into his bedroom.
The first commando through the door was met by Bin Laden's daughters, and he pulled them aside.
A second SEAL was then rushed by the terror group leader's wife, who either ran toward him or was pushed from behind, and he shoved her to one side before shooting Bin Laden in the chest.
A third SEAL entered and shot him in the head."

And apparently all this was captured on video. I wonder how long it will be before we get another new version.

Now the government fears the identities of Osama bin Laden's killers will be revealed, endangering them. It's practically a certainty their identities will be revealed. Journalists want to make them celebrities so they can make a lot of money. The administration was stupid for identifying the team.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Milton Friedman explained that illegal Mexican immigrants were good because they couldn't receive welfare.

POLITICS:

Because Ron Paul supports freedom including freedom of association, he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act.

The government always pretends it protects our privacy from companies. Ha.

"Current law doesn't require those Internet service providers to "retain any data for any particular length of time," although some already do, said Jason Weinstein, deputy assistant attorney general at the DOJ's Criminal Division. And many wireless companies — which must collect some data — also "do not retain records that would enable law enforcement to identify a suspect's smartphone based on the IP address collected by websites the suspect visited," he noted in prepared testimony.That's why Weinstein urged the Senate Judiciary's Privacy, Technology and the Law subcommittee on Tuesday to consider data-retention legislation as it weighs new privacy efforts in the digital age. The top DOJ official said such a congressional fix would boost the agency's ability to investigate privacy breaches, prosecute other digital crimes and ferret out abuses in the offline world."

With friends like that...

Huckabee says he's not running for president.

MISC:

Security bunkers.