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.