Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

A list of Obama's big, failed policies.

TAX AND SPEND:

Explanation of the euro crisis.

The sovereign debt crisis in Italy forces PM to resign.

Study shows that government stimulus has no positive effect on job creation. Of course not. When government takes money out of the private sector in order to create parasitic jobs, it destroys more productive private sector jobs in the process.

Scary analysis of how much poorer zombie spending makes us.

"At the present pace, over the next 10 years, the real value of America’s output will fall nearly in half. Measured in terms of output, Americans will be only half as wealthy as they are today."

It's happening fast.

REGULATION:

Obama set a new record with federal regulations last year, and he's on pace to match it this year. Bush the Younger was the previous record holder, which he set five times.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

More banksters are coming out from behind thrones in Europe to sit on the thrones.

I heard this story about Ben Bernanke meeting the troops the other night, but I forgot about it. This is clearly an attempt by Bernanke to use the troops to boost his standing. Also, it's interesting he picked Texas. Remember when Rick Perry said Bernanke would get roughed up if he came to Texas? I also think this is a poke in the eye to Perry.

This article brings up a good question: Why didn't the Eurozone just kick Greece out? It would have greatly reduced stress on the other members, and it would have been an object lesson to them. They might have been afraid that Greece would quickly rebound which might lead to other member nations withdrawing.

"Just this past week, the shocking collapse of Wall Street trading firm MF Global showed that even after the 2008 crash, US federal regulators have utterly failed to assure the financial system’s safety.We learn that MF Global had leveraged its capital 35 or even 42 to 1, the same perilous ratio that brought down Wall Street’s titans in 2008. That means MFGlobal lent out or invested $35-42 for every dollar it held. That’s crazy Las Vegas behavior and a formula for disaster."

That's the first I've heard of this. I thought banks weren't making loans.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

People push back against smart meters, and California company recalls them. It's nice to see the occasional small victory against the ruling class.

POLICE STATE:

Airport shut down over plastic water bottle in trash.

It's nice to hear a rational voice talk about the Penn State situation.

"What I am about to say is that this wildfire was not necessary; this entire thing could have been handled with much less destruction and this is the result of Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly’s irresponsible actions and statements. I’ll repeat: Linda Kelly has almost single-handedly taken a bad situation and turned it into tragedy."

Absolutely. She whipped the press into a frenzy that is ruining innocent lives to advance her own interests. What would her interests be?

"I also support the right of someone to a fair trial, and Kelly’s irresponsible and, frankly, selfish, actions not only have destroyed lives at Penn State, but they also have effectively guaranteed that no jury from this side of Outer Mongolia even could begin to hear Sandusky’s case without damning pre-trial prejudice."

But it's not just that. She's using this tragedy to get a lot of press and buy votes. I bet she's using this is a launch pad to run for governor in a few years. Here's a good description of the complicity of the media:

"The other thing that Kelly has done has to take a story and help turn it into a "narrative," and journalists around the country have jumped on this, not caring if the "narrative" even is true. If it sounds like what happened in the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case, that is because we are seeing something very similar occurring.The Penn State "narrative" is "Joe Paterno let Jerry Sandusky sexually assault boys so that Paterno’s Penn State football program would not have its reputation damaged." The parallel "narrative" is that the "good old boys were protecting each other." Yet, we have no idea if either "narrative" is true. We don’t know, and that is why there should be real-live investigations, as opposed to inflammatory statements from officials that journalists dutifully copy as though they were Official Stenographers of the State."

It looks like Kelly has done worse than I thought.

"Kelly got indictments against Curly and Schultz for not reporting the alleged incident to police (and she says she might indict Spanier), and then got further indictments against them for perjury, as she claims they lied to the grand jury.As I see it, this is where Kelly not only has gone off the tracks, but also has acted destructively. According to Pennsylvania law, neither Curly nor Schultz are what the law calls "first responders," people who are required to report any claim or alleged incident of child abuse or neglect. For example, as a college professor, if any of my students even make an offhand claim about being abused, I must report that claim to the police, or I can be charged with a crime myself.
Curly and Schultz, however, did not fit into this legal category. Furthermore, according to the law under which they were indicted, the statute of limitations had passed. To make things even more complicated, the alleged victim in this incident is not even an accuser and no one knows who he is, nor has he "come forward," despite pleas from Kelly’s office."

Typical government lawlessness. This shows the destructing and self-serving nature of Kelly's press conference:

"Until Kelly decided to escalate the situation, the police were quietly investigating Sandusky, not seeking major publicity in the process. This was what police should have been doing, and at the end of their investigation, if they believed they had enough evidence, they could have arrested Sandusky and charged him with the assaults for which young men who say they were Sandusky’s victims have claimed he committed.Sandusky would have been arrested, and while I have no doubts that there would have been further investigations at Penn State, I also believe that if investigators believed that Paterno had looked the other way, he could have been permitted to retire at the end of this season without the show of force from the PSU board of trustees.Instead, we are treated to an awful show of riots, public accusations, and a situation in which it now is impossible for clear heads to prevail. I believe that this did not have to be the result, yet because Kelly wanted to ramp up the heat, she has sowed the wind, and what follows is the inevitable whirlwind."

Exactly.

This is a pretty good explanation of how the institutional structure caused the people at Penn State to do what they did. I still say that Paterno thought he was informing the police when talked to the AD. I'm sure he thought he was doing the right thing by going through proper channels. It wasn't like he had a victim. He didn't. It wasn't like he was the witness. The witness was a grad student who Paterno probably hardly knew, and he was accusing somebody Paterno knew well and respected. Paterno probably didn't believe the witness, but dutifully passed the report on anyway. The people I would fault most are the witness' father who told him to contact Paterno instead of the police and the guy who was in charge of the campus police but who decided not to investigate.

Now the sharks intend to sue Paterno because he's got money.

The incarceration rate in the US is a national disaster.

Praise for grand juries that investigate the state and resist prosecutors.

"Both before and after American Independence, "the grand jury's primary method for exercising its power was not rigorous review of facts, but nullification of validly enacted laws," Washburnobserves. They didn't dispute the prosecutor's presentation of the facts, but rather "the legislator's right to impose such laws, or at least the prosecutor's decision to enforce them in a given context.""

Today they act as rubber stamps for prosecutors while providing the illusion of legitimacy.

""Today, the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor, who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody, at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury," wrote federal District Judge William J. Campbell in a 1973 law journal article calling for formal abolition of the institution on the grounds of redundancy. This isn't to say that the grand jury is considered useless by the prosecutorial caste: It helps maintain the pretense that prosecutors are servants of the public will."

The grand jury in this case is an incredibly rare exception.

More evidence that TSA's nude scanners cause cancer.

POLITICS:

The list of Occupy outrages grows with gun shots, broken legs, tuberculosis, lice and STDs. We know the Occupy protests are waning. I wonder if the naive socialists at these protests are beginning to see that this is what socialism produces.

Open letter from the 1 percent is pretty funny.

Obama has pulled back to even against a generic Republican with independents. Yikes. Where are these people's brains?

I always wondered why politicians wrote books before an election. I actually thought it was to promote their campaign, and maybe that's part of it. But now that I know they can use their campaign cash to buy their own books, I realize they do it so they can transfer campaign cash into their private bank accounts.

Prediction that the Republican establishment is intentionally trying to lose the 2012 presidential election in hopes that four more years of Obama will bring the small government conservatives back into the establishment fold. As dumb as that sounds, the freaks in Washington have egos the size of mountains, and they might really believe that. But this isn't necessary to explain their support for Romney and Perry and their antipathy toward Paul and Cain. The Republican establishment always supports the big government candidate and tries to destroy the small government candidates. That's been true my entire life, and I believe it's been true for over a century. They don't distinguish between the north-eastern establishment and the Taft wings of the party for nothing. And even when a small government guy like Reagan gets elected, the establishment comes in and runs things and grows the size of government. But I do agree that the Republican establishment is rapidly going extinct.

LOCAL:

Fears that Wright-Pat might suffer budget cuts. Wright-Pat is the only thing keeping this area afloat.

"The impact would be felt around the region: Wright-Patterson is the state’s largest single-site employer, and as of 2009 it accounted for one-sixth of the economy of the Dayton region.“If Wright-Patterson catches a cold,” said Gessel, “the region’s economy gets pneumonia.”"

That's a fact.

"The House Armed Services Committee predicts that if the supercommittee fails to reach an agreement — or if Congress doesn’t pass the committee’s proposal — Ohio’s active-duty military force of 8,261 would be cut by about 17 percent, or 1,377 jobs.The impact would be bigger for the state’s defense contractors: Of their 25,001 jobs, a quarter — 6,250 — would be lost under the mandatory cuts."

I'd rather see these folks doing productive work than laboring in the parasitic political economy, but most of the money for those jobs comes from out of state. That means they'll most like leave the state to work. Ohio's economy, especially around here, is so bad that I doubt they'll stay and work in the area.

"National defense is just one part of the federal budget facing deep cuts. At risk are federal research dollars that lead to cures for diseases, food safety programs that prevent devastating food-borne illnesses, and highway dollars that keep roads safe."

Baloney. That's some nice propaganda for the state.

"Deborah Gross of DaytonDefense, an organization representing some 300 companies that work with Wright-Patterson, said contractors in the region work on “the kind of science and engineering that are going to produce the capability to keep us safe in the future.”"

Does that seem excessive to anybody but me?

MISC:

Learn Austrian economics.

One typically overlooked consequence of government interference in our economy is the ever-increasing shadow work we're all forced to do.