Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Dutch on the verge of making net neutrality law. This is bad news.

The internet forces Delta to change its policy charging soldiers for carrying four bags. This is power to the people. Government regulation will stamp this kind of thing out.

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Obama trying to use the UN to ban guns.

TAX AND SPEND:

Setting the record straight on the debt ceiling.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Senate gives Fed power to limit what banks can charge for credit card transaction fees. This is price fixing, and price fixing always results in shortages. After this goes into effect, expect delays when you try to purchase with a credit card. Expect other fees to go up to compensate. Naturally the consumer will blame either the merchant or the bank even though the government is to blame.

EDUCATION:

Department of Education sends SWAT team to collect delinquent student loan.

""They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids," Wright said."
"The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife's defaulted student loans."

And you thought it smart for the federal government to take over the function of education. Lots of people might support the Department of Education but not this action. Those people are mistaken about the nature of government. Every government decree, law or regulation is the threat of violence against the people, backed by violence. If you give a government monopoly power over education, it's inevitable that the Department of Education will send SWAT teams after people. If you do not submit, heavily armed and armored government thugs will bust down your door and stick a gun in your face. If they don't murder you, they will kidnap you, drag you off and lock you in a tiny cage. All because you have the temerity not to submit to their crimes.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Good USA Today for tying this spring's weird weather to the strong La Nina, not global warming.

POLICE STATE:

Government's espionage case against NSA whistle-blower collapses, results in plea deal for misdemeanor.

POLITICS:

Gary Johnson is rudely introduced to the real world of failing to garner enough poll support to enter a debate. I don't see a problem with this. I didn't see a problem with it last year when Ron Paul was excluded. I don't see a problem with it today. Networks care about ratings. It makes perfect sense for them to demand some poll performance to be invited to a debate.

We get a little bit of insight and misinformation on this article about Obama's bad week.

"Barack Obama's worst week was about more than bad data. The two great legislative monuments to the first Obama term, the remaking of the health-care industry and the Dodd-Frank financial reform, look like they've got serious structural cracks. A McKinsey report estimates that a third of employers will abandon their health-insurance plans come 2014. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the failure (or inability) of Dodd-Frank's regulatory arm to write new rules for the $583 trillion derivatives market has the financial sector in a panic over its legal exposure."

The misinformation: Obamacare was designed to pressure employers to drop their health care plans and move employees into the government plan. Obamacare was designed to be the final step before full socialized medicine, so this revelation isn't a revelation at all. The insight: the real purpose of the Dodd-Frank bill was to protect financial firms. Many of us knew that all along, but this is the first time I've seen it leaked in the mainstream media. God forbid companies face legal exposure for their actions.

Hillary Clinton wants to become head of the World Bank. I want to abolish the World Bank. Clinton denies she's going to change jobs.

Yet another politician arrested for sexual assault.

LOCAL:

Dayton government schools to lay off 179 people. I feel sorry for them, it's always tough to lose a job, but it's good news for the rest of us. That's 179 people being freed from the parasitic political economy so they can begin working to create wealth that improves all our lives in the productive, private economy.

MISC:

How and why government agents corrupt scientists.

In a good reminder that corporate titans become that way because of their ability to partner with government to their advantage, not because they're prudent business men, Steve Jobs announces Apple will build a new campus that looks like a space ship. No doubt politicians at all levels will love this, so it will boost Apple despite costing way more than necessary. Jobs is a master at working with government to profit his company, especially with Apple's patent portfolio, and it enables him to produce average products and sell them at an exorbitant price. Another lesson is that government enables corporations to grow bigger and more inefficient than could happen in a free market. The bigger a corporation gets, the more it suffers from the fatal flaws of central planning. The bigger a corporation gets, the more insulated it gets from price information. Both of these factors put an upper limit on the size of corporations in a free market. But because government protects them from competition, they can grow much bigger and more inefficient in an economy dominated by government. Jobs is also great at capitalizing on the style over substance culture created by loose monetary policy and entitlement mentality. I'm no fan of Apple because it willingly partners with government to loot us, but blaming Apple for caving to threats from Senators, no matter how stupid, is misguided.


Mark Sisson's definitive guide to walking. Your mileage may vary.


How the US has evolved to look more like France before the French Revolution than the colonies before our Revolution.

"If a barn needed to be raised, a school roof repaired, or a social cause advanced, then people banded together — and the work was done. Tocqueville concluded, "Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the government in France … in the United States you will be sure to find an association.""

Not any more.

"The reward of merit and the absence of punitive laws led to an unprecedented prosperity and social equality; and this made for communities bursting at the seams with energy.Today, America is a society of elites. Business elites claim subsidies, liability limits, and bailouts. Political elites enjoy the economic bounty of skimming off the sweat and blood of taxpayers: rich salaries, plush expense accounts (not counting bribes), platinum pensions and health insurance, etc. Bureaucratic elites (civil servants) "earn" much more than private-sector workers, even though they have greater job security and richer benefits, like plush pension plans that taxpayers can only dream about.
Economic privileges are accompanied by legal ones."

It's sickening when you think about it.


Here's another fantastic example of economic ignorance.


The folly of happiness research.