Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Graphic shows the change of congressmen regarding SOPA during the internet protest.

TAX AND SPEND:

After four years of Strickland and Democrats controlling Ohio government, Ohio ranked 39th in overall tax climate for business. After a year of Kasich and Republicans being in charge Ohio ranks 39th still. No change. Imagine that. There's no difference worth noting between Republicans and Democrats.

REGULATION:

I remember when my vice-president at AMD left to become CEO of Rambus. It seemed bizarre that their entire business model was built on creating specifications, patenting them then licensing them. I chose to keep designing and building microprocessors. Back then the term patent troll didn't exist. Now Rambus is known as a patent troll. Now the third of three critical Rambus patents has been overturned. The article contains a good comment:

"There's something that seems unsavory and wasteful about a business environment in which a company's stock value "fluctuates sharply on its successes and failures in patent litigation and licensing." The linked article offers a brief but decent summary of the way Rambus has profited over the years from these now-invalidated patents."

Let's hope this prompts business to get back to innovating instead of playing the government rent game with patents.

HEALTH CARE:

Paula Deen the diabetes queen who hid her disease while promoting the establishment lifestyle that caused her illness is the poster child for the corruption and unhealthy lifestyle the government and its agents promote.

The Harvard "food plate" looks very similar to the FDA's food pyramid. What a shock. Who would have thought that Harvard would just echo the establishment? The funniest thing about this is it's presented as an alternative though it looks pretty much identical. The academic establishment is tinkering around the edges to create the illusion it bucks the government establishment when in fact it's really supporting it.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Unprecedented two feet of snow in Seattle.

Sixteen prominent scientists publish open letter in Wall Street Journal telling people that global warming alarmism is exaggerated.

You know how bad Obama's CAFE standards are for cars? The crooks in California one-upped him.

I love innovation, and if seawater greenhouses lower food costs, that's awesome. But how often are we going to allow these weirdos to claim that people are going starve because of population growth? They've been saying it for a century, but nobody starves unless government forces them to starve. People aren't dumb. Free people feed themselves, their families and their neighbors. It's not that hard. People have been doing that for a million years or more, and they'll keep doing it for a million more except when governments starve them to death.

It didn't take environmentalists long to come after the personal coffee makers.

POLICE STATE:

FBI to mine Facebook and Twitter data. They should not be able to mine private data.

Prisons as geriatric facilities.

Here's one of those issues that might inspire Walter Block who wrote Defending the Undefendable. Why should people be forced to delete data that's embarrassing to another if that data was gathered without coercion?

WAR:

Why does the US government have to transform an ancient ship about to be dry-docked into a floating base for SEALs? Why don't the SEALs have a modern ship designed for this purpose to work from? This just shows the poor performance of government bureaucracy.

Government uses the new NDAA provisions allowing the military to detain anybody in the world including Americans in America to justify holding a prisoner in Guantanamo. There but for the grace of Obama go us all.

POLITICS:

Paul might defeat Romney in the head to head match-up in Virginia. He also might win Maine.

On Obama's mentor Saul Alinsky and Rules for Radicals:

"“Rules for Radicals” is dedicated to Lucifer, who is praised by Alinsky, both for being “the first radical” and for winning himself a kingdom. In it, Alinsky condemns the state of the modern world, blames capitalism, boasts about his past rabble-rousing successes, then explains in detail several ways to turn citizens against each other to achieve political goals. The substance is mostly amoral, often immoral, advice on how to change public sentiment. It is essentially an instruction guide on how to foment strife, turning neighbor against neighbor until the innately civilized desire to compromise forces a political opponent to acquiesce."

At Obama has been tremendously successful at following that model as president. Here's a good reminder why the worst always rise to the top of government:

"Reading “Rules for Radicals” will depress you. Alinsky took an extremely dim view of his fellow man. He had little use for individuality. He had no compunction in using a political target’s virtue to subvert his or her values. And he actively promoted dishonesty. Understanding that his tactics might be difficult for anyone with a conscience to stomach, Alinsky offered this helpful tidbit: “Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.”"

Government is an inherently violent and coercive institution. It's immoral. Only the most depraved individuals, those most eager to do violence to their fellow men, can rise to the top.

Ron Paul's highlights from last night's debate. He was very good again. I guess that's why Limbaugh was attacking him earlier.

Breakdown of how many times the Republican candidates and Obama use certain words.

The Nevada establishment moves the caucuses to accommodate Newt's billionaire benefactor.

"Bunce said in an email to the Chronicle that it appears Gingrich, lacking organization and campaign efforts in the Silver State, is “going to have his billionaire buddy try and buy an election for him.”"

Don't orthodox Jews have this problem every other election year? Do you think they'd do that for you? Sometimes the corruption is so obvious, and legal, it makes me laugh out loud.

Gingrich is fading for a second time. If Santorum drops out, I think Paul can beat Romney. Right now, Gingrich and Santorum are insuring Romney wins the nomination.

Something is going on behind the scenes. Newt Gingrich is an establishment politician. He supports every big-government, establishment position there is. He always has. He always will. You'd be hard pressed to identify any substantial policy difference between Gingrich and Romney. Yet the Republican establishment is crushing Gingrich. Maybe they know he can't be elected. Maybe that's all there is to it. But I don't believe it. I think something more has gone on behind the scenes than we know about and Gingrich is challenging them to go public with it.

One of my clients contracts a firm to produce newsletters for him. I don't know whether he checks them with a fine toothed comb or not, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't because he makes him money doing other things. He pays somebody to write the newsletters so he can spend his time doing the things that make him money. This is just standard business procedure. I'm sure Ron Paul was in the same position, so I believe him when he says he didn't personally oversee the newsletters that many have accused him of being racist.

"Ed Crane, the longtime president of the libertarian Cato Institute, told the Post that he and Paul discussed direct-mail solicitations at the time and that they agreed that "people who have extreme views" are more likely than others to respond."

Oh my goodness, this sounds like the Cato-Mises feud has attacked the Paul campaign. The Koch brothers, government supported oligarchs, fund the Cato Institute. They've banned Mises and Rothbard. They opposed the creation of the Mises Institute. Since Ron Paul is Misean, a friend and to an extent a student of Rothbard, it seems the Kochs are attacking him. But that makes sense. Paul threatens their government protected influence.

The media seems to realize that the claims that Paul knew about the supposedly racist comments in his newsletter won't work. Only the right-wing accomplice press is promoting that argument, and they'll probably lose more listeners over it. The left is taking the tact of:

"Paul pursued strategy of publishing controversial newsletters, associates say"

Shame on Dr. Paul for being controversial. When I started writing political opinions at DCP four years ago, my chosen strategy was to be controversial. You can't persuade people with facts alone. I learned that from decades of debating. People don't listen to rational arguments until you overcome their emotional barriers. In order to persuade somebody on politics, you must first engage them, and that means you must penetrate their shields. Once you do that, facts, reason, and rational arguments work. So I have no problems with Ron Paul's strategy of being controversial. That's the only way to persuade. I believe this story will quickly fade away until Paul wins a primary or the nomination, whichever comes first. But Paul will have to handle it with class once that happens.

I only hope liberals and conservatives figure this out before the next time they vote.

Please. Our political system is a scam.

LOCAL:

Butler County government is stealing money from small businesses and individuals, depressing the local economy, in order to provide corporate welfare to big retail giants.

"Approximately 3,000 construction jobs and roughly 4,500 permanent jobs would be created and it’s estimated the development would generate $1 million to $1.5 million a year in sales tax collections, according to Steiner."

No mention of how many jobs are killed or will never be created by stealing the money in the first place. This is an example of the seen versus the unseen effects of government intervention in the economy.

Guess what happens when government thinks it should engage in venture capitalism.

"A publicly funded center meant to help new businesses working with wireless technology has not generated expected revenues, resulting in its chief executive working for free for 20 months and public officials searching for a new business model.In 2007, Dayton City Commission approved a $1.4 million investment in the Dayton RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Convergence Center as an incubator for companies creating new uses for RFID. The technology lets objects or people be ID’d and tracked wirelessly via radio waves.
The center was supposed to become self-sustaining through royalties paid by companies that were based there. On Friday, public officials said that hasn’t happened."

This is Dayton's Solyndra. And it's creepy.

"Dayton City Commissioner Nan Whaley believes the center and its member businesses can still be made viable. “We just have to be thoughtful about it, and realize we’re doing this with taxpayer dollars” Whaley said."

And you have been since 2005. How's that seven years of stolen money working out for us? Not so well. How's it working out for you Nan? Wonderfully. Funny how that works.

MISC:

Facebook to go public.

Mars rover Opportunity turns eight. That's amazing, but it would be so much more impressive had it been funded voluntarily.

The third major coronal ejection in a week.

The north star is shrinking, but don't expect it to disappear in your lifetime.

I'm not in the least bit surprised that people lie more when texting. Most of personal communication is done through expressions and gestures. Without those, people can get away with lies more.

On the face of it, calling inanimate objects alive seems stupid. But at the same time, I defy you to define life. My definition is an entity with free will. Do we have free will? Do other objects have free will? Nobody knows.

Do we really need a taxpayer funded study to tell us early humans formed social networks?

""The astonishing thing is that ancient human social networks so very much resemble what we see today," said Nicholas Christakis, professor of medical sociology and medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor of sociology in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and senior author on the study. "From the time we were around campfires and had words floating through the air, to today when we have digital packets floating through the ether, we've made networks of basically the same kind.""

No, there's nothing astonishing about this. Why would anybody expect it to be any other way? I guess when you're a tax feeder trolling for more tax dollars, you have to say stuff like to impress the bureaucrats who feed you.