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EDUCATION:

In a nice reminder of the education bubble, UD will graduate a record number this year. I'm sad to say, we'll be reading about their failure to find jobs in the near future.

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TAX AND SPEND:

Obama's Lord Geithner lied about the government making a profit on TARP. Tell me something I didn't know. If somebody tells me rocks on earth flew up into space in violation of the laws of gravity, I'd be as skeptical.

The market is trying to put obsolete government services like the postal service out of business so all Americans can be richer and our economy can grow. Government won't allow it.

"Passed by a 62-37 vote, the bill would result in the postal service receiving an $11 billion refund for overpayments made to a federal fund to pay down debt and finance buyouts to 100,000 postal employees."

This is a great example of how government prevents the advance of civilization by stealing money from people to subsidize archaic business models.

REGULATION:

Obama to ban children from working on their family's farms. Just another attack on the family.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Obama's agents seize bank account of small farmers ostensibly for structuring: depositing less than $10,000 even though they made more than $10,000.

"While being questioned, the Sowers were finally presented with a seizure order and advised that the feds had already emptied their bank account of $70,000. The Dept. of Justice has since sued to keep $63,000 of the Sowers’ money, though they committed no crime other than maintaining their privacy.

Without funds, they will be unable to make purchases for the spring planting.

When a similar action was taken against Taylor’s Produce Stand last year, the feds seized $90,000, dropped the charges and kept $45,000 of the stand’s money.

Knowing that most farms operate on a very thin margin, such abuse of power wipes out a family’s income, and for a bonus, the feds enhance the monopoly power of Monsanto, Big Dairy and their supply chain."

Another secret way of putting people who resist government's corporate state out of business.

Bankster puppet Romney says he will boot Bernanke. But as we learned today, Bernanke doesn't want the job. That's like trying to take credit for an earthquake after the earthquake has happened. Greenspan was smart enough to duck and run and leave Bernanke to deal with his mess. I have no doubt Bernanke is equally as smart to duck and run and leave the far bigger mess he created to his successor.

Friedman repudiates the fed because it has been unsuccessful, but not central banking in general. He failed to understand that central banks can only do harm.

EDUCATION:

Six year old charged with sexual assault for touching another child during a game of tag. More war on the family.

NJ teachers dismissed because they were caught bullying autistic student. They were not dismissed because they bullied him. They were dismissed because they were caught. This is another example of the normal, everyday abuses government employees heap on the people they rule over that are routinely covered up by the press, but once they become public by other means, then the powers that be pretend they were isolated incidents, and that gets covered by the press to reinforce the charade.

"In a YouTube video that summarized the recording, Chaifetz said the classroom aide was fired after he provided the tape to district administrators, but that the teacher and another aide were transferred. Reussert's statement was the first indication that multiple people had left the district over the incident."

So the teacher wasn't even fired. He was just re-assigned, and the bigwigs no the press won't follow up.

"Reussert did not identify the workers or how they left the district. "This is a personnel matter and there are specifics that I cannot legally address publicly," her statement said.

Chaifetz said he wanted more information. "They need to say who it is," he said, asserting the teacher is still a district employee."

They'll threaten this father and his child to shut him up.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Trees grow faster in urban heat islands.

Greenies trash park on Earth Day, leaving it other to pay to clean up their mess.

I'm just going to quote this headline:

"Postal Service + Wind Farm + Electric Vehicles – What could possibly go wrong?"

Shall I count the ways?

WAR ON DRUGS:

The feds invade and shut down a school to seize educational marijuana plants. Remember when Obama said he would stop raids on medical marijuana? He's become more aggressive. I wonder if the president has any power over this or if the government is all rogue.

POLICE STATE:

A mom says TSA agents treated her daughter like a terrorist. They treat every American like a terrorist. Why did this mom subject her daughter to the TSA's brutal molestations?

You know those paragons of virtue who molest children and take pornos of every American who gets on a plane? They're letting drug dealers through. How many gross abuses do we have to see before we acknowledge that government, because it is based on theft and coercion and because power corrupts, is the problem? I read a dozen stories like this every day. How long until we reject not only both parties but the entire institution of coercive government?

FBI compromises a remailer in Austria. I guess Austria is now part of the US.

Ninety year old woman locks criminal cop in her basement, eventually wins $95,000 judgment and other stories of police abuse. The problem is these cops are not arrested and prosecuted. They don't even lose their jobs.

Now we learn that police recommended Zimmerman carry a gun. He was a fool to listen to police. They sucked him in. He should have learned how to deal with dogs and people before ever carrying a gun. Now he might lose his freedom for trusting the police.

Lessons for self-defense learned from the Zimmerman case: #1, never talk to the police.

"Every 911 call Zimmerman ever made will now be used against him."

Those calls are probably the strongest evidence against him. Without them, he might never have been charged.

Here's a good description of the US police state:

"[It's] a totalitarian police state which relies on repressive methods to maintain control. These methods include intense physical and electronic surveillance of both [] citizens and foreign visitors."

This statement was released with no sense of irony by the US state department regarding Cuba.

WAR:

All my life, people have told me that war spurs innovation. What a bunch of crap. War blows wealth up. Do you think more innovation is stirred by wealthier people or poorer people? Rhetorical question. It's unlikely that anybody would have developed a bionic ankle if not for a decade or US aggression against poor Muslims who never heard of the USA. I'm happy these veterans are getting quality electro-mechanical limbs. But I'd be a lot happier if they had their God-given, biological limbs and those research resources were focused on heart disease or cancer or something more productive. I'm livid about this.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Rubio's neo-con resume speech to win Romney's support as VP. What a transparent loser. No thanks.

POLITICS:

Establishment Republican in King County kick the caucus out of a building because Ron Paul supporters out-voted her preferred chairman. The petty and childish thirst for power and the feeling of entitlement exhibited here is just hilarious and disgusting at the same time.

Gingrich is dropping out. Paul gets to go one-on-one with Romney in Texas on May 29. California is on June 5.

I believe Ron Paul is making his last stand to win the nomination in Clute, Texas. I wish I still lived in Texas.

"The Ron Paul 2012 Texas headquarters is located at 845 West Plantation Drive, Clute, TX 77531. Initial office hours are from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 2:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Sundays. Those interested in volunteering for the campaign should contact the Clute office directly by calling 979-473-9995 or emailing texas@ronpaul2012.com."

It's either Paul or Obama's twin Romney.

Romney's plans. I like the explanation of school vouchers as a way for government to take over private schools. Government means government control.

So in some sort of upside-down world, prosecutors in the bogus Michigan militia case ask for charges to be dismissed against the last defendant, a man who was declared incompetent to stand trial. They must be trying to save face. I can't imagine some other motive.

Obama to begin campaign trips as if he hadn't long been engaging in campaign trips. I bet he doesn't pay a dime for the lying, positive press he gets.

MEDIA:

CNN reports on Romney, Santorum and Gingrich delegates but omits Ron Paul.

In another example of how the mainstream media carries water for Democrat, the USA Today now claims that abortion restrictions are gaining ground in the states with the unspoken declaration that voters must vote for Obama and his Democrat allies to block these restrictions. The media has entered full pro-Obama campaign mode. Look at this picture too. If that doesn't dovetail into Obama's fictional support of women versus Romney, I don't know what does.

LOCAL:

The government doesn't make people family. This is an attempt to open the door to government defining family.

MISC:

Albert J. Nock on the real reasons for the American Revolution. You might guess them: using government to loot the people.

Friedman agreed with Marx on the progressive income tax and the central bank. Both were wrong.

I think I've made a powerful case that the US, which I've long said is one step below the Soviet Union, is more authoritarian than China.Worse, China is moving towards freedom while the US moves toward totalitarianism.

I'm not surprised to learn that number representations including graphs and charts are not instinctive. These are things that raise humans above animals. They are what enabled us to understand the world through science and analysis. These are the breakthroughs that enabled civilization, so I'm not surprised they are not natural to primitive people.

China's governing elite is outrageously wealthy and corrupt. Shocker.

""The lesson from Bo's case is that only institutionalized oversight can prevent the abuse of power, and that only a democratic mechanism can prevent officials from becoming corrupt," Caixin reported."

What a crock of crap. The only way to prevent the abuse of power is to prevent the power. Democracy does just the opposite. This signals that China's rulers are promoting democracy as a way of stealing more money and wealth from the Chinese people.

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FEDERAL RESERVE:

So the Fed is create a health care bubble, an education bubble and a new tech bubble. Any other bubbles I'm missing? Don't forget the cupcake bubble.

HEALTH CARE:

North Carolina government threatens to jail a blogger for telling people how he beat diabetes. Forget freedom of speech. Forget good health. The government only cares about control. Hint: the blogger went paleo.

Whenever you see economic growth broken down by sector, health care is always growing the fastest. That's because it's a giant bubble too.

Government's control of our food supply enabled another mad cow to appear in the US.

"Clifford did not say when the disease was discovered or exactly where the cow was raised. He said the cow was at a rendering plant in central California when the case was discovered through regular USDA sample testing.

Dennis Luckey, executive vice president of Baker Commodities, told The Associated Press that the disease was discovered at its Hanford, Calif., transfer station when the company selected the cow for random sampling.

Rendering plants process animal parts for products not going into the human food chain, such as animal food, soap, chemicals or other household products."

This sounds like another factory farm problem. Other cows with mad cow probably already passed into the system. We'll read about them later.

Violence in childhood can change genes. More and more we're learning how our genetic expression is modified by our environment. I don't like the implication that this should be used as an excuse for the government to take children from their parents and put them with "safe families." I don't think government's approval of families would have anything to do with safety.

Registered dietitians want nutrition prisons.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

BP engineer charged with obstruction of justice for deleting text messages off his iPhone about the Gulf oil spill. That's ridiculous. Text messages on your phone should be your property to do with as you wish. The government thinks it's the defacto owner of text messages on personal phones. Those messages should be available on servers.

Methane released from the Arctic Ocean. I guess we're supposed to be alarmed.

A bombshell paper correlates ocean biodiversity and climate strongly with nearby supernova rates.

• "The long-term diversity of life in the sea depends on the sea-level set by plate tectonics and the local supernova rate set by the astrophysics, and on virtually nothing else.
• The long-term primary productivity of life in the sea – the net growth of photosynthetic microbes – depends on the supernova rate, and on virtually nothing else.
• Exceptionally close supernovae account for short-lived falls in sea-level during the past 500 million years, long-known to geophysicists but never convincingly explained..
• As the geological and astronomical records converge, the match between climate and supernova rates gets better and better, with high rates bringing icy times."

That's pretty amazing. Apparently earth's climate is driven more strongly by the sun and cosmic rays from supernova than anybody previously dared claim. The best scientific theories tend not only to fit the data, but also to be elegant, and this is elegant.

The E-15 policy quietly marches forward to benefit government cronies at the expense of the people. This article blames Obama, but it would have happened regardless of which party was in power.

WAR:

Prostitution and the US military.

POLITICS:

UK Judge grills Murdoch over political influence.

"James Murdoch faced tough questions about News Corp.'s NWSA +0.95%

political influence in Britain—especially with a key government minister—and his handling of a scandal over illicit reporting tactics at the company's British tabloids, during a public grilling before a judge-led inquiry into U.K. media practices."

Talk about hypocrisy. Is he going to grill the other top 100 plutocrats who control government?

Ron Paul likely to win Iowa. It'll be funny to see the press play catch-up and explain why they ignored the winner for most of the campaign. I wonder if they'll stop calling Mitt Romney the presumptive nominee.

New York Republican establishment makes robo-calls mis-informing voters that Ron Paul has dropped out of the race. I can't help but laugh at the blatant dishonesty and the fear of these crooks.

It's hard to see how Paul overcomes these results. He won over 20 percent in only one of five of today's primaries.

Apparently Newt isn't convinced Romney will pay his debts, so he's dropping out. That will make it a two man race.

Pat Buchanan believes the flagrant, public excesses of government under Obama are a sign that Democrats own government.

"What all of the above reveals is how the Party of Government views the government. They see its perks, privileges and power as their entitlements, their inheritance, their patrimony.

And there is some truth to that.

After all, the bureaucracy was built up in the New Deal and Great Society, and remains dyed-in-the-wool Democratic.

Even when the GOP wins the White House, the conservatives are outsiders in this city. Even when Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan won their 49-state landslides, neither came even close to carrying Washington, D.C., the sole Electoral College precinct that has never gone Republican.

While John McCain lost the nation by eight points to Obama, he lost Washington, D.C., by 86 points. This is Obama's town. He owns it.

But if a noxious aroma of self-indulgence and corruption is arising from it, it is Obama's problem, and it is no longer a small one."

I'm sure there's some truth to Buchanan's claim, but I don't believe for a second that the Secret Service culture suddenly changed after Obama was inaugurated. Individuals don't change that radically, that quickly. They did the same under Bush. The GSA parties may be getting bigger under Obama, but they got bigger under Bush too. The important factor is the size and scope of government, not which party controls the White House. Bureaucrats party like it's 1999 every day on the taxpayer dime regardless of who is in power. His point about entitlement is right, but he's wrong about the partisanship. The Republicans attend the same orgies as the Democrats.

MEDIA:

In a wonderful example showing how successful Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell and the Mises Institute have been, the USA Today asks if the US should return to the gold standard. Ben Bernanke must be crapping in his pants.

Obama has figured out how to turn the Secret Service scandal into political gain: call for more women Secret Service guards. Obama's trying to buy more votes from women. He really thinks he can drive enough wedges to win enough women's votes to win the election.

LOCAL:

Jobless rate falls from 8.9 to 8.5 in Montgomery County. Unfortunately the article doesn't tell us if that because of job creation or people dropping out of the work force. This article, like the one yesterday claiming an increase in sales tax means the economy is improving, show the writers don't understand economics. They're not giving us enough information because they don't understand how an economy works.

MISC:

As previously hinted at, private company Planetary Resources announces plan to mine asteroids. If they capture an asteroid into Earth or lunar orbit, they will have proven the technology to deflect an asteroid from hitting Earth. This is an example of people acting in their own interests, but that interest is not imminent profit.

Observation of photons show either independence or entanglement based on actions which occur after the observation. Our understanding of the universe is quite incomplete.

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REGULATION:

The patent merry-go-round continues with Facebook buying 650 AOL patents from Microsoft. The money and the interest in these patents show just how significant government coercion is to the profits of tech companies.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The high costs of escaping the euro make it unlikely any country will withdraw.

HEALTH CARE:

Farmers in Michigan file suit to protect their pig stock from state extermination.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

I'm sure somebody will blame the snow storm in the east on global warming, but what would they blame the similar storm in 1928 on? Weather happens.

A prominent climate alarmist changes his tune.

"“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

…

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.”"

There is still hope for humanity. More:

"In 2010, Lovelock advised that "The great climate science centers around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is.""

Weak is a euphemism for fraudulent, so maybe this guy is a reformed fraud, not just an enlightened alarmist.

Germans are overcoming the great global warming fraud too.

"Germany Building 17 New Coal, 29 New Gas-Fired Power Stations"

Good for them.

You know all the alarmist baloney spouted by the frauds and their misguided disciples? Here's ten real, wonderful consequences of increasing CO2 levels.

The leading exposer of the great great global warming fraud, Steve McIntyre, comments on hockey stick fraud Michael Mann's new book:

"I had also spent some time considering a response to Mann’s book. It amazes me that a reputable scientific community would take this sort of diatribe seriously."

I'm sure McIntyre knows this and intended his comments tongue in cheek: the global warming frauds are not a reputable scientific community. They're a clique of pseudo-scientists empowered by practically unlimited government money because they promote the government agenda of the great global warming fraud.

Praise for the oil speculator for helping insulate the needy from the ravages of government.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

For the first time since the Great Depression, more Mexicans are fleeing the US than entering.

WAR:

It sounds like Obama plans to expand his illegal war in Uganda using Kony as his excuse.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The launch of a medium range ballistic missile sets up India as a major military power.

POLITICS:

Military personnel in the Columbian prostitute scandal have their security clearances suspended.

Americans don't trust anybody. Why should they? Every aspect of our society is dominated the most successful criminal organization in the history of the world.

In a wonderful reminder that Mitt Romney is a liberal, Marco Rubio is giving a VP audition with a speech at the liberal Brookings Institute.

The Gingrich campaign goes deeper in debt. What is Gingrich's angle? My guess is he's working for Romney, taking votes from Ron Paul as a pretend anti-Romney candidate, and in return for his delegates, Romney will pay off his debts.

Why the Obama campaign should be panicking.

"Three out of the five major polls released this week (CNN, Pew, and NBC/Wall Street Journal) had the president leading former Gov. Mitt Romney, but only by single digits. The fourth (CBS/New York Times) was a tie, and the fifth (Gallup) had Romney ahead by five points. And that was after the bruising Republican primary season. You'd think the president would heading into the summer with a double-digit lead, based on his "likability" numbers."

I think plenty of Democrats are already running away from the president.

POLITICS:

Criticism of Cato's Ed Crane is going through the roof. Apparently everybody in the press has known he was a horrible person, but nobody bothered to report it, much like the press covers up for politicians. I don't know how Crane managed such protected coverage.

LOCAL:

This article claims that since sales tax revenue is up, our economy is improving. That's not true. Sales taxes are up because of stead price inflation. That's bad for our economy because government is confiscating more money though both overt taxes and the covert inflation tax. The economy may be improving, but we can't tell it from this.

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HEALTH CARE:

It looks like vaccines are causing whooping cough or at least making people susceptible to it.

POLICE STATE:

Picture of George Clooney doing something for the TSA. He's not being searched. Maybe he's in the nude-scanner. This is some sort of publicity stunt. George Clooney had plenty of other options, but he chose to do this and have his picture taken doing it. It seems to me this is supposed to promote Americans to surrender to this baloney.

WAR:

Remember when Obama claimed US forces would leave Afghanistan in 2014? He lied.

"The U.S. and Afghanistan reached a deal Sunday on a long-delayed strategic partnership agreement that ensures Americans will provide military and financial support for at least a decade beyond 2014, the deadline for most foreign forces to withdraw."

US troops will be there at least until 2024. No thanks.

Guess what happens when you allow women in the world's largest and deepest good old boy network? Rape. Anybody who is surprised by this is a fool.

POLITICS:

The Columbian Secret Service and prostitute scandal has spread to the hotel President Obama stayed in. It looks like the Secret Service is in for a house-cleaning.

Ron Paul is winning lots of delegates in Minnesota.

MISC:

Billionaires to announce plan to mine an asteroid. This is evidence that the marketplace will develop space, and already would have been if government hadn't restricted access to technology. With NASA out of the way, man would have already made great strides in space.

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FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Nice summary of the US government's sham attack on Megaupload.com.

"As Megaupload's Kim Dotcom's megafarce trial continues, the New Zealand Herald reports that his alleged offense not only falls below the threshold for extradition, but also that the warrant may not be properly served. 'My understanding as to why they haven't done that is because they can't. We don't believe Megaupload can be served in a criminal matter because it is not located within the jurisdiction of the United States,' says Megaupload's lawyer Ira Rothken. Not surprisingly, Kim Dotcom has a few choice words to say about having his business trashed this way, with 220 jobs lost, and millions left without access to their legitimate data."

I'll bet the sadists in the US government are already implementing a plan to punish New Zealand for its insolence in not extraditing Kim Dotcom.

TAX AND SPEND:

The reality of government debt.

"Today, governments issue bonds. They have been doing this in the West for three centuries. They have been defaulting on these bonds ever since, just as they have been doing on all other forms of debt since at least the fourth century B.C. The rate of defaults has escalated over the last two centuries.

In an academic paper on these defaults, we learn this. "Most fiscal crises of European antiquity, however, seem to have been resolved through currency debasement' – namely, inflations or devaluations – rather than debt restructurings."

This is a tip-off. The politicians have sought to preserve the illusion of trust – "their word is their bond" – only to cheat the debtors by inflating the currencies. They repay the debts with money of reduced value. They pay the amount of money they owe, but the money will not buy as much. As the prophet Isaiah told Judah in the mid-eighth century B.C., "Thy silver has become dross" (Isa. 1:22a). This deception has been going on for a long time."

But government bonds tie the bond-holder to the government, which is exactly what the government wants.

"This leads me to a consideration of the economics of government bonds. It can be summarized in one sentence: "Politicians' words are their bond, and they are liars.""

Well said. The essay includes an interesting explanation of how government are able to fleece the rich through bonds more than they can through taxes.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

More evidence the sun may be repeating a cycle like the one that produced the very could Maunder Minimum.

POLICE STATE:

NSA whistleblower claims NSA is already illegally capturing all email from all Americans. Laws are for us serfs, not our rulers.

WAR:

Our murderous rulers continue to march toward outright murder of Syrians as they did Libyans. Syrian is no threat to the US. Libya was no threat to the US. Iraq was no threat to the US. The same for Somalia, Yemen and god knows how many other countries where our rulers are murdering people.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The election in France is harbinger of turmoil in the EU.

POLITICS:

All those votes Obama purchased with our tax dollars pays off with big campaign cash advantage over Romney.

Ron Paul has enough money to carry on.

On the bacchanalian orgy that is the US government.

"I am certain no one has undertaken an objective study, but I would venture to say U.S. government employees have for decades been the single largest and most identifiable group using foreign born prostitutes. No other nation has as big a military presence around the globe as the United States and the military is certainly the largest user of these services. Ask any veteran who has served abroad."

No kidding.

"Many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea (the Pacific Ocean, that is), I served at a top secret military installation with about 1,000 other Army and Air Force personnel. Aside from providing maintenance to the station, the biggest income center for the locals had to be the prostitution and black market industries. This is true of nearly every military installation around the globe, whether it is for intelligence gathering, placating or killing the natives or simply providing a landing strip for aircraft.

The term "Ugly American" was created by Americans, mostly in the 18- to 25-year-old demographic, stationed overseas drinking themselves into stupors, degrading the natives and having paid sexual relations with the local girls. The natives frowned on these activities, of course, but the money was too good to pass up.

The maltreatment of conquered or co-opted nations is as old as the history of wars and empires. The occupying forces have forever taken advantage of the natives and prostitution is as much a part of empire building as creating supply lines."

It's no different at home. At least in the kinder, gentler US empire, soldiers pay for sex with natives instead of the raping and pillaging done by past empires.

"If you take hundreds of young men and make them part of an occupying force thousands of miles from home, whether in a combat zone or not, the inevitable happens.

It is not an aberration as the current news from government officials suggests any more than finding a deer in the woods is an oddity.

Ask the call girls in D.C."

I bet there are more prostitutes in D.C. than any city on earth and they're better paid.

MEDIA:

Here's another example of that media meme I predicted we would see all election cycle.

"Primary stumbles warnings for Romney versus Obama"

Yep. Romney's clumsy and a stumbler in contrast to the perfectly oiled machine of the Obama campaign. It's not like Obama ever claimed there were 57 states or anything. All Obama's flubs will be covered up, and the press will manufacture flubs for Romney even when he doesn't make any.

One of the most significant but rarely mentioned ways the media lies to us is by intentionally using outdated, flattering or unflattering, or outright photo-shopped pictures.

Here's one of the grotesque realities that smart people realized decades ago but stupid people might recognize today.

"GOP elite holds off the tea partiers"

Well, duh. that's like saying the king has killes many serfs. Maybe they'll write about dog bites man next.

MISC:

Magnitude 6.6 quake off Indonesia. Indonesia is really getting rocked.

I'm disgusted by both Hitler and Mao themed restaurants.

The NBA players hired a former US Attorney to head their union, so they should expect dirty, dishonest tricks from him. US Attorneys break the law with impunity. That attracts corrupt people and further corrupts them.

A conservative writing in the American Conservative compares the US to China and finds that China is more free and more supportive of human rights. It's nice to see conservatives beginning to figure out what libertarians have long understood. This comparison of how the Chinese government handled the melamine scandal and how the US government handled the Vioxx scandal shows that because the Chinese government isn't democratic, it fears its people and therefore responds to them unlike our government which has bamboozled the people into thinking they control it so doesn't fear us.

"China’s leaders may not be democratically elected, but they pay close attention to strong popular sentiment."

The reason they pay so much attention is they are not democratically elected. The Chinese people have no illusions about it. They realize that conquerors rule them, and those rulers realize that the people can overthrow them at any time if they rise up en mass.

"Long prison sentences were freely handed out and a couple of the guiltiest culprits were eventually tried and executed for their role, measures that gradually assuaged popular anger. Indeed, the former head of the Chinese FDA had been executed for corruption in late 2007 under similar circumstances."

Oh my goodness. Could you imagine if top government officials in the US were executed for corruption? Our government would be wiped out.

"Although the Vioxx scandal certainly did generate several days of newspaper headlines and intermittently returned to the front pages as the resulting lawsuits gradually moved through our judicial system, the coverage still seemed scanty relative to the number of estimated fatalities, which matched America’s total losses in the Vietnam War. In fact, the media coverage often seemed considerably less than that later accorded to the Chinese infant food scandal, which had caused just a handful of deaths on the other side of the world."

But Merck is effectively a government bureaucracy as are the media companies that do these stories. Government agents are never held accountable for their crimes. Even if you think about war coverage, the news never informs us who profits from war, with the lone exception of Halliburton during the Iraq war, and that was only because Dick Cheney had worked there.

"This story of serious corporate malfeasance largely forgiven and forgotten by government and media is depressing enough, but it leaves out a crucial factual detail that seems to have almost totally escaped public notice. The year after Vioxx had been pulled from the market, the New York Times and other major media outlets published a minor news item, generally buried near the bottom of their back pages, which noted that American death rates had suddenly undergone a striking and completely unexpected decline.

The headline of the short article that ran in the April 19, 2005 edition of USA Today was typical: “USA Records Largest Drop in Annual Deaths in at Least 60 Years.” During that one year, American deaths had fallen by 50,000 despite the growth in both the size and the age of the nation’s population. Government health experts were quoted as being greatly “surprised” and “scratching [their] heads” over this strange anomaly, which was led by a sharp drop in fatal heart attacks.

On April 24, 2005, the New York Times ran another of its long stories about the continuing Vioxx controversy, disclosing that Merck officials had knowingly concealed evidence that their drug greatly increased the risk of heart-related fatalities. But the Times journalist made no mention of the seemingly inexplicable drop in national mortality rates that had occurred once the drug was taken off the market, although the news had been reported in his own paper just a few days earlier.

A cursory examination of the most recent 15 years worth of national mortality data provided on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website offers some intriguing clues to this mystery. We find the largest rise in American mortality rates occurred in 1999, the year Vioxx was introduced, while the largest drop occurred in 2004, the year it was withdrawn. Vioxx was almost entirely marketed to the elderly, and these substantial changes in national death-rate were completely concentrated within the 65-plus population. The FDA studies had proven that use of Vioxx led to deaths from cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes, and these were exactly the factors driving the changes in national mortality rates."

That is amazing. That means Vioxx was potentially killing 50,000 people a year.

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Because Democrats are afraid of the political ramifications if they advance a budget, Senate Democrats don't even bother to show up to the budget committee.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Techies understand the Fed is fueling another tech bubble.

Explanation of how the Fed steals from the rest of us to further enrich the richest people in America.

"The Fed, having gone on an unprecedented credit expansion spree, has benefited the recipients who were first in line at the trough: banks (imagine borrowing for free and then buying up assets that you know the Fed is aggressively buying with you) and those favored entities and individuals deemed most credit worthy. Flush with capital, these recipients have proceeded to bid up the prices of assets and resources, while everyone else has watched their purchasing power decline."

He fails to mention that the Fed also favors the politically well connected and how they turn around and give a bunch of the money the Fed gives them to their political patrons.

HEALTH CARE:

This is just one of many doctors offices shutting down because of Obamacare.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Obama isn't satisfied with the billions he's wasted on green energy boondoggles so far, so he wants to double down in order to collapse our economy even faster.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Today is pot celebration day to protest marijuana criminalization. If enough people protest, maybe our rulers will change the law. They're starving to tax revenue badly, so there's an opportunity.

POLICE STATE:

Advocated of jury nullification wins in federal court.

I'm skeptical that these FBI reports were critical. There hasn't been a terrorist threat beyond any other petty criminal attack in the US since 9/11 despite the FBI entrapping dozens of patsies.

Info on the spy box government is requiring every new car to carry as of 2015.

"Our cars were once a tangible expression of the freedom ideal. They are fast becoming mobile cages. And the really devilish thing is they’re making us pay the costs of our own imprisonment, too."

Security people talk about levels of security, and the job of the police is to protect the government from the people. That means cars will be one level. Houses will be another level. Cameras on the streets will be another level. Drones in the sky will be another level. They are boxing us in.

Right after I wrote the above, I read this:

"U.S. Building a Domestic Population-Control Grid Based on Military Ops. The U.S. military has become expert at controlling urban populations in Iraq – but why is the Department of Homeland Security building similar capabilities here?"

Because the function of police is protect the looters from their victims. This is an excellent article with a larger list of surveillance-control measures including descriptions. Surveillance is always about control. Our rulers know the dollar and our economy with it are doomed. They are controlling us to protect their position as apex predators when the unrest follows. They also know that time is short, so they are putting these oppressive programs in place fast.

POLITICS:

Obama's former green jobs czar Van Jones spews a Marxist, hate-filled rant.

Sociopaths have taken over the world.

"If I'm correct in my assessment, it would imply that the prospects are dim for conventional investments – most stocks, bonds and real estate. Those things tend to do well when society is growing in prosperity. And prosperity is fostered by peace, low taxes, minimal regulation and a sound currency. It's also fostered by a cultural atmosphere where sociopaths are precluded from positions of power and intellectual and moral ideas promoting free minds and free markets rule. Unfortunately, it seems that doesn't describe the trend that the world at large and the US in particular are embarked upon."

As long as government has the power of coercion over the people and as long as it has a monopoly on violence, sociopaths and psychopaths will be drawn to government, and they will manipulate to meet their personal desires at our expense. It doesn't matter if the government is a democracy, a dictatorship, a monarchy or anything else. The form doesn't matter. The power is what matters.

"It's hard to pick an exact time America's moral bankruptcy started; perhaps the draconian Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were the first real breach in the country's ethical armor – but they were quickly repealed and subsequently served as an example of what not to do for many years. There were real moral problems that arose because of the Mexican War, the War between the States and the Indian Wars. There were early attempts to create a central bank, but they fortunately failed. But I believe the real change in direction came with the Spanish-American War, which resulted in the accretion of an overseas empire, particularly in the Philippines where 200,000 locals were killed. As Randolph Bourne said, "War is the health of the state.""

From the beginning, European colonists began wiping out the Indians and taking their land, so institutionalized theft was part of the American character from the very beginning, but the Spanish-American war is an interesting choice because that's when America's rulers began competing with European nations in colonialism on the world stage.

"There is no truly capitalist state in the world today; perhaps Hong Kong comes closest (although not very close).The early US came quite close in some regards. In fact, the West as a whole was quite free in the century from the fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the start of World War 1 in 1914. Almost everywhere taxes were low and regulations few; there was no inflation because gold was currency everywhere; there were almost no serious wars and passports hardly existed, which enabled most anyone to travel almost anywhere without permission. It's no accident that, in percentage terms, the 19th century saw far greater and wider advances in prosperity than any time before or since. Capitalism is both natural and ideal – but, oddly, it doesn't exist anywhere. Why not? I'll explore that shortly."

Sad truth.

"Do you think for a moment that if you could make Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or any of the other sociopaths who control the state sit down and listen to intellectual arguments, it would change their attitudes? The chances of that are Slim and None. And Slim's anorexic.

Why am I so certain of that? It's not because these people have low IQs and can't understand the arguments. It's because most of the people at high levels of government are sociopaths. They're susceptible to reasoned argument against a police state to about the same degree that a cat can be convinced he shouldn't torment a mouse before killing it. People like Obama, Hillary or Cheney – which is to say most people with real power in Washington and every other government – do what they do because it's their nature. They're as cold, unemotional and predatory as reptiles, even though they look like people."

They're not cold and unemotional. They're just incapable of empathizing with others. They get quite happy when they advance their personal interests and quite angry when they are prevented from doing so.

"You may think I'm kidding or exaggerating for effect. I'm not. It's been said that power corrupts, and that's true. But it's more to the point to say that the corrupt seek power. A good case can be made that anyone who wants to be in a position of power should be precluded from it simply because he wants it."

Where have I hear that before? Oh yeah... I talk about it all the time. But while the corrupt are certainly drawn to power, power does corrupt. You can't dismiss either effect.

"There are lots of ways to divide people into two classes: rich/poor, male/female, smart/dumb, etc. But from the perspective of political morality, I'd say the most useful dichotomy may be people who want to control the material world vs. those who want to control other people. The former are scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs; the latter are politicians, bureaucrats and assorted busybodies. Guess which group inevitably – necessarily – gravitate toward government?"

Absolutely.

"There are different types of intelligence – emotional, athletic, mathematical and literary intelligence, for instance. A person can be a genius in one and an idiot in the others. The same is true of stupidity; it comes in flavors."

I used to talk about that all the time in the past. I never heard anybody else say it.

"I would like to suggest that what really distinguishes political elites from normal people is not just a predilection for stupidity but a real capacity for evil. Evil might best be defined as the intentional and usually gratuitous commission of acts that are cruel or unjust. A person who commits many evil acts is a sociopath. The sociopaths who are naturally drawn to government eventually come to dominate it. They're very dangerous people. They reset the social mores of the country they control. After a certain point, a critical mass is reached, and it's GAME OVER. I suspect we're approaching that point."

As do I.

LOCAL:

How clueless is this? The City of Dayton Office of Economic Development has contracted a Colorado firm to do a website instead of contracting a Dayton firm.

How stupid is it to charge a 14 year old boy with rape because he had consensual sex with a 12 year old girl? Where is it written that 13 is a magic age? The more interesting question is why did this government school enable these two to get together and have sex in a school bathroom during the school day.

UD celebrates the higher education bubble with $30 million in new construction. Brown Street is going to get wiped out when that bubble pops. We're also seeing signs the education bubble is popping.

"“We are notifying staff of pending board action on reductions in force which is part of a larger comprehensive cost reduction plan,” Donnelly said. “The cuts are necessitated by the $10 million in lost state funding over four years and the defeat of the school district 6.99 mills levy request last November."

At some point, probably very soon, the federal government will be forced to cut education spending, and people hurting economically will continue to refuse levies for schools. The laws of economics are like the law of gravity. When people jump, on the way up they can fool themselves into thinking they've defied gravity, but gravity always wins. People can fool themselves into believing they've overcome the laws of economics too, but the laws of economics always win also.

MISC:

I can't help but laugh at this baloney about how game developers are trying to kill the resale market. Imagine if car producers killed the resale market for cars. The exact same arguments apply, and they're wrong. People will take a risk on expensive games know they can resell them and recoup some of the money. Many won't take that risk if they can't resell. Game developers are cutting their own throats.

Government domination of science has produced unprecedented scientific fraud. The more government grows, the more scientific fraud will grow.

Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

FBI seizes server of anonymous remailer service because somebody used it to email a fake bomb threat.

ECONOMY:

Prediction that IBM will shed 78 percent of US jobs by 2015. Ouch.

TAX AND SPEND:

Research shows that spending cuts stimulate the economy.

The federal government has amassed $5 trillion in debt since Obama took office.

Republicans are leading the charge to take away "tax breaks" for retirement savings. And you thought Republicans supported lower taxes.


U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts, the same judge who through out sedition charges against the Michigan non-militia also ruled that Fannie and Freddie have to pay property taxes in Michigan. This judge is making herself a big target.


How war and welfare spending, high taxes and brutal regulations brought down the Roman empire and produced feudalism and the dark ages. The US government is doing the same, and if we don't stop it, our civilization will collapse too.

REGULATIONS:

Obama's new regulations shut down swimming pools. FTC to regulate appliance labels. This is another way he's collapsing our economy.

HEALTH CARE:

Top ten upcoming Obamacare taxes and fees.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Forbes global warming alarmist freaks out.

"We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices."

Does he realize that even alarmist scientists don't think much warming will happen for decades? If this guy worked for me, I'd fire him. This kind of irrational rant harms Forbes' reputation. As long as they employ this guy, they aren't a serious publication. From a rebuttal, also in Forbes:

"Direct warming from the greenhouse gas effect of CO2 does not create a catastrophe, and at most, according to the IPCC, might warm the Earth another degree over the next century. The catastrophe comes from the assumption that there are large net positive feedbacks in the climate system that multiply a small initial warming from CO2 many times. It is this assumption that positive feedbacks dominate over negative feedbacks that creates the catastrophe. It is telling that when prominent supporters of the catastrophic theory argue the science is settled, they always want to talk about the greenhouse gas effect (which most of us skeptics accept), NOT the positive feedback assumption. The assumption of net positive climate feedback is not at all settled — in fact there is as much evidence the feedback is net negative as net positive — which may be why catastrophic theory supporters seldom if ever mention this aspect of the science in the media."

I believe the case for negative feedback is much stronger than the case for positive feedback.

Analysis shows that 90 percent of CO2 growth comes from natural causes. Not only does CO2 growth have only a minuscule effect on climate, man has only a minuscule impact on CO2 growth.

EPA passes new regulations to hinder fracking.

POLICE STATE:

The US government allows radical Muslims to come into the US all the time, but it can't manage to provide asylum to Christians who fled violence.

WAR:

Hillary Clinton talks about NATO intervening in Syria. No amount of bloodshed satisfies these monsters.

VA to hire 1,900 additional people to help deal with mental health issues in the military.

It's the 19th anniversary of the Waco massacre.

POLITICS:

Obama is trying to capitalize politically on Pat Summit's illness. What a creep.

Establishment Republican fraud in Wyoming.

The Columbian prostitute at the center of the Secret Service scandal has left town, probably in fear for her life.

Congress is quietly passing a bill requiring spy boxes in all cars by 2015. This is a good reminder that the job of the press is to cover up all the important stuff government does while covering the charades that designed to divide and distract us while government conquers us.

Did we really need a survey to tell us that contraceptives are not a big issue for the upcoming election?

MEDIA:

After a USA Today reporter starts a story on the Pentagon's propaganda service, somebody initiated a propaganda campaign about USA Today and the reporter on the internet. I wonder who could have done it.

"A Pentagon official confirmed that the military had made inquiries to information operations contractors to ask them about the Internet activity. All denied it, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiries were informal and did not amount to an official investigation.

The websites were taken down following those inquiries. Various other sites and accounts were removed for violating their providers' terms of service."

...

""This is the work of somebody who knows what they're doing. They have some experience of covering their tracks. This is probably not the first time they've done something like this," said Beal, CEO of Trackur, an online reputation tracking service."

Surely none of our incorruptible government employees would do such a thing.

MISC:

The amazing thing about the space shuttle piggybacking on a 747 is not the space shuttle. It's the 747.

You can diet with a feeding tube up your nose.

These restrictions in the interest of protecting sponsors could seriously damage these Olympics.

Free kibbles

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Big majority of Americans support the natural right to keep and bear arms.

TAX AND SPEND:

Americans are renouncing their citizenship in record numbers to escape federal taxes.

"Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That's a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It's also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined.

But not everyone's motivations are as lofty as Superman's. Many say they parted ways with America for tax reasons."

Taxes, actually the totality of the burden of government, are driving businesses and jobs overseas, and now they're driving citizens to leave the country too.

Space shuttle Discovery was nearly lost like several before it. I welcome the heroism that saved people's lives, but we all have to recognize that government kills.

"You see, we dodged a bullet in 2005. One we should have seen coming but didn’t."

Thankfully in this case some individuals overcame the deadly system.

HEALTH CARE:

Responding to President Obama's warning that the Supreme Court should uphold Obamacare, Ron Paul said students who learned Constitutional law under Obama should be given a refund. Sweet.

The Cincinnati-Dayton region will host a Medicare-Medicaid experiment.

"Modeled after private-sector approaches, it’s part of the federal health care overhaul and will transform how 75 of the region’s primary care practices are paid to care for patients. "

Maybe instead of having government model and corrupt a system based on the private sector, maybe we should just allow the private sector to deliver health care.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Even regime mouthpiece Reuters admits that Obama's green jobs boondoggle has been a bust.

The new $60 light bulb won a $10 million prize from government.

POLICE STATE:

Indianapolis police chief resigns after a blood sample from an officer involved in an accident gets corrupted twice. The criminals in uniform protect their own.

"In addition to the resignation of Ciesielski, who did not return a message left on his cellphone Tuesday, IMPD Deputy Chief of Professional Standards Valerie Cunningham was placed on paid suspension.

Lt. Paula Irwin, who was in charge of the property room, and Teresa Brockbrader, a civilian employee, also have been placed on paid administrative leave."

This looks like an extremely unusual case where politicians are holding police accountable. The mayor must have been afraid of losing his job over this.

"Ballard and Straub stopped short of saying the blood was intentionally tampered with, but its mishandling was met with disbelief by several observers, including Aaron Wells, whose 30-year-old son, Eric Wells, was killed in the crash."

Sure sounds intentional to me.

""We are currently working with an independent lab to clarify the implications of testing the blood from the second vial," Curry said."

This is a blatant admission that police labs can't be trusted. Defense attorneys in Indianapolis should be able to make hay with this for years to come.

Law enforcement versus peace-keepers and the power to decline services.

The US uses sexual humiliation as a means of control. Think TSA. Think prison strip searches for minor offenses. Think Abu Gharib.

WAR:

Now pictures of 82 Airborne personnel posing with corpses have emerged. We've seen so much of this stuff you have to believe it's commonplace. It's the norm. And it's sick. Our government's wars are seriously damaging the minds of good men and probably women. The big wigs want to pretend it's unusual so they can avoid culpability.

Following up: Who are We?
According to Secretary of Mass Murder, Leon Panetta, the elite 82nd Airborne folks who took pictures of themselves with desecrated corpses violated US values. What a lying sack of sadism. Apparently bombing women and children into early graves supports US values, but taking pictures with their blown up bodies violates those values. How is it the picture taking the problem but the killing is just fine? In what morality does this make sense? I'm disgusted with myself that I used to fall for this propaganda. It's makes me sick to my stomach. But I can now see through it to identify the creeps like Panetta, Obama, Bush, Petraeus, and whatever the name of that goon who worked for Bush and Obama as head of the Murder Department was.

Today, the Indian government tested a missile that could carry a nuclear weapon to Beijing. Did the US government and it's propagandists hyperventilate over it? No. Did they threaten India over it? No. Did they withdraw food trade over it? No. Do I sense a double-standard between India and North Korea? Does this double-standard encourage North Korea and Iran to develop nuclear weapons? Do I need to answer those questions?

FOREIGN POLICY:

It looks like all that war talk with Iran is cooling down and enabling negotiations because gas prices spiked, but the Israelis might muck them up.

POLITICS:

The scapegoating has begun in the Secret Service every agent screws hookers scandal. Three agents have been dismissed as if they did something out of the norm. For all the reading I've done by intelligent people exposing the tricks government uses to fool people into supporting it, I've yet to see analysis of this incredibly common scapegoating technique which they use so effectively to deflect blame for the inherently corrupt and corrupting nature of government.

MISC:

Pretty soon TV will not only brainwash children into being docile serfs and good consumers, but it will do the same to dogs.

I'm rarely impressed with the supposed weirdness of quantum particles; I learned to accept it three decades ago (or more). But I find this information about the electron impressively weird.

"Isolated electrons cannot be split into smaller components, earning them the designation of a fundamental particle. But in the 1980s, physicists predicted that electrons in a one-dimensional chain of atoms could be split into three quasiparticles: a 'holon' carrying the electron's charge, a 'spinon' carrying its spin and an 'orbiton' carrying its orbital location. In 1996, physicists split an electron into a holon and spinon. Now, van den Brink and his colleagues have broken an electron into an orbiton and a spinon (abstract)."

How can electrons in one context be elemental but in another context be divisible? That answer is obvious, but it's fascinating that scientists haven't discovered it yet.

Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Exposing the lie that China is an enemy of the US, the two governments held secret, joint cyber-wargames.

TAX AND SPEND:

Ohio's income tax rate is down a tiny bit. It's always good to lower rates, but this uncertainty is stupid. Nobody knows what their income tax rate will be, therefore they can't plan for it. Just get rid of the tax.

Boortz on the GSA fiasco.

"But tell me you are not shocked by pictures of these government hacks sitting in hot tubs, enjoying alcoholic beverages, throwing parties, giving each other awards and bragging about the fact that they will never be investigated … or so they thought. Tell me that none of this shocks you. If it does, then your heads’ been buried up your rear end."

It doesn't shock me in the least. I've been saying for decades that this is what government employees do with our money. The bigger our government gets, the worse the corruption gets. The only difference between these guys and the Secret Service agents in Columbia and everybody else in government is they got caught. The press couldn't cover up for them like they do for everybody else. Government is a giant, never-ending bacchanalian orgy funded our tax dollars.

Here's the terrible reality of the government growth.

"The federal government will spend 31 percent more this year than it spent in 2008."

It's easy to blame Obama for that growth, but if you remember, George Bush nearly doubled the size of government in eight years. By that standard, Obama is pretty much on pace with Bush. A Romney administration would continue the growth at pretty the same pace. Politics is a scam to divide and conquer us, and government continues its inexorable expansion of looting regardless of which party controls the White House.

How many times has a Republican promised this only to fail to deliver in office?

"“I’m going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them,” Romney said, according to NBC News. “Some eliminate, but I’m probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go.”"

But he's not going to tell us the specific ones. We'll just have to trust the Massachusetts liberal Republican because trusting Republicans has worked so well for us in the past.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

As government gets bigger, the supposedly too big to fail banks get bigger right along with it.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Mann's emails must be really damning. I'm looking forward to finally seeing them once he loses all his appeals.

In a classic Obama move, he blames speculators for high gas prices instead of his policies. Even MSNBC recognizes this is just a political ploy on Obama's part.

A group of scientists calls for all science journals to require that researchers provide source code as a condition of publication of papers.

Panel appointed by Obama praises Obama for his response to the Gulf oil spill, but criticizes House Republicans and oil companies. Imagine that. It's almost as if the result was pre-determined.

How government enables pollution and private property rights limit it. In water:

"The rivers, and the oceans too, are generally owned by the government; private property, certainly complete private property, has not been permitted in the water. In essence, then, government owns the rivers. But government ownership is not true ownership, because the government officials, while able to control the resource cannot themselves reap their capital value on the market. Government officials cannot sell the rivers or sell stock in them. Hence, they have no economic incentive to preserve the purity and value of the rivers. Rivers are, then, in the economic sense, "unowned"; therefore government officials have permitted their corruption and pollution. Anyone has been able to dump polluting garbage and wastes in the waters. But consider what would happen if private firms were able to own the rivers and the lakes. If a private firm owned Lake Erie, for example, then anyone dumping garbage in the lake would be promptly sued in the courts for their aggression against private property and would be forced by the courts to pay damages and to cease and desist from any further aggression. Thus, only private property rights will insure an end to pollution — invasion of resources. Only because the rivers are unowned is there no owner to rise up and defend his precious resource from attack. If, in contrast, anyone should dump garbage or pollutants into a lake which is privately owned (as are many smaller lakes), he would not be permitted to do so for very long — the owner would come roaring to its defense."

In air:

"Before the mid and late 19th century, any injurious air pollution was considered a tort, a nuisance against which the victim could sue for damages and against which he could take out an injunction to cease and desist from any further invasion of his property rights. But during the 19th century, the courts systematically altered the law of negligence and the law of nuisance to permit any air pollution which was not unusually greater than any similar manufacturing firm, one that was not more extensive than the customary practice of fellow polluters."

"Robert Poole cogently defines pollution "as the transfer of harmful matter or energy to the person or property of another, without the latter's consent."[8] The libertarian — and the only complete — solution to the problem of air pollution is to use the courts and the legal structure to combat and prevent such invasion."

I like that definition of pollution.

POLITICS:

Here's a bit of good news: the 2011 Senate was the least active in 20 years. Since everything government does is damaging, the Senate limited the damage.

"On the passage of public laws, arguably its most important job, the Senate notched just 90, the second lowest in 20 years, and it passed a total of 402 measures, also the second lowest. And as the president has been complaining about, the chamber confirmed a 20-year low of 19,815 judicial and other nominations."

So 90 new laws, 402 measures and 19,815 nominations is low. I'd have preferred zeros across the board.

NASA bureaucrats use Space Shuttle Discovery to pay homage to their political patrons in Washington D.C. who steal our money to pay them.

New York Occupiers smash Starbucks and attack police. They're planning a traditional leftist May Day general strike. These guys should be thankful for the police. If it wasn't for the police, normal Americans would shoot them in defense of selves and property.

Accusations that voter fraud cost Paul a victory in Alaska.

I've noted lately that both Cato and Reason magazine have suddenly been friendlier to Ron Paul, and they've been referencing Mises and Rothbard regularly. Lew Rockwell, who used to blame the Kochs, had a change of heart and now blames Ed Crane. I wonder what he learned and from whom.

MISC:

As if the ring of fire heating up wasn't bad enough, but now Santorini is filling with magma. Another Iceland volcano is showing signs of activity. A volcano comes to life in Mexico.

Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

A blogger in Britain is facing jail time for calling a politician a curse words. How's that freedom thing working out for you?

ECONOMY:

The market is enabling people in Joplin, Missouri to recover from a devastating tornado much faster than government is doing in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

TAX AND SPEND:

I'm skeptical of this poll.

"Nearly three-quarters – 72% – of Americans say they support the [Buffet rule], according to a CNN survey of 1,015 Americans, including 910 registered voters."

I find that very hard to believe.

The government wastes trillions of dollars each year, but Congress is having hearings about a lavish government party in Las Vegas. This is just a charade to fool people into thinking they care about taxpayer's money. What this party illustrates, just like the Secret Service guys and the hookers, is the universal depravity that government breeds. These incidents are notable because they're the norm. That's what bureaucrats and politicians do every day, and they fully expect they will never be caught because the press won't report them and their fellows won't report them. Like I've said many times, as soon as the cameras are off the Democrats and Republican retire to a bacchanalian orgy, they light joints with hundred dollar bills, snort coke, hire hookers and people to wave fans over them, and it's all funded by our tax dollars.

REGULATION:

People should ignore stupid laws whenever possible.

WAR:

This is a horrible statistic.

"For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands."

We have to end these perpetual war.

POLITICS:

Paul supporters taking over Nevada, Maine and Georgia Republican parties.

MISC:

US revokes security clearances and suspends Secret Service agents accused of consorting with Columbian prostitutes. The rank and file get punished for their actions. Not the higher-up or politicians.