Free kibbles

LIBERTY:

While we worry about the big items like health care oppression, the bureaucrats are stealing our liberty from us.

"The United States Government Printing Office publishes the Federal Register. Each issue is a 275-page book, three columns per page. There are about 250 issues published each year, totaling approximately 69,000 pages. These are pages of incoherent rules that apply to every area of our lives. They are written by government lawyers to be interpreted by lawyers and debated by lawyers.

...

We have come a long way, baby: in the Federal Register – maybe two million pages...

...

In 1983, Harvard University's legal historian Harold Berman summarized the story in a 45-page introduction to his book, Law and Revolution. We are losing our liberties in the West, he said, because of a quiet but relentless legal revolution that has been underway for a century: the transition to administrative law. The executive bureaucracies are writing the regulations and enforcing them through administrative law courts.

...

The crucial power to restrict the growth of bureaucracy is the power of the veto. This power used to be imposed by juries. This became the great threat to the power of bureaucracies. This is why they began to substitute administrative law courts for civil courts. There are no juries in administrative law courts. There are only judges on the payroll of the bureaucracies. These administrative law judges interpret the law of their employers. They are funded by their bureaucracies. The defendants must hire their own lawyers to play the legal game of "look it up." Then the administrative law judge decides which lawyer is correct.

...

Best of all from the point of the bureaucracy is the principle of the Napoleonic Code: the accused is guilty until proven innocent . . . at his expense. This is contrary to the common law tradition. Common law is being reversed today. The Internal Revenue Service operates in terms of the Napoleonic Code.

...

This is why all big-government politicians and their obedient, salaried intellectuals hate anything even remotely resembling the nineteenth-century gold standard. They resent the veto power of gold over the expansion of credit by the banking cartel. This is why they never challenge the central banks. They know who butters their bread: the central banks. They know what the butter is: borrowed fiat money used by governments to expand power.

The politicians and their many hired spokesmen – economics professors, newspaper columnists, think-tank intellectuals – dismiss the gold standard because they understand that this system placed a veto power in the hands of individual holders of IOU's from banks. This restrained the banks. This also limited the ability of governments to borrow money in order to defer tax increases.

...

The case for gold as money is the case for cutting the bureaucrats' budgets. It is therefore the case for the restoration of our liberties."

While we're defending what little freedom we have left from the White House and Congress, bureaucrats are killing our freedom with death by 1000 cuts, but I don't think the gold standard is a silver bullet against government oppression. Of course Lincoln had to go off the gold standard to wage the Civil War, so maybe it is. I don't think the US fought any wars while on the gold standard. Apparently the gold standard was in effect during the War of 1812, but it was still funded by inflation.

"It is interesting to note that once the D.C. banks ran out of money and their paper seemed to be worthless, the U.S. government was faced with the dilemma of not being able to finance the war. The D.C. banks suspended payments of gold in December of 1814 and in January of 1815, a month later, peace was declared. They couldn't fight the war without money so they had no choice but to negotiate a peace."

That's pretty interesting. No wonder aristocrats hate the gold standard. It's a powerful limiter on their power.

ECONOMY:

Using numbers uncorrupted by government, economics makes the case we're in a second, Greater Depression.

"The national debt increased by $1.8 trillion in 2009, to $11.9 trillion. The OMB projects the 2010 deficit to reach $1.5 trillion. Even without a new colossal $2 trillion healthcare bureaucracy, deficits were expected to stay in the $1-trillion-per-year range for the next decade. The truth is that deficits will exceed $1 trillion annually and approach $2 trillion by 2019. The national debt would reach $25 trillion by 2019.

An unsustainable trend will not be sustained. The national debt will not reach $25 trillion in 2019. Unless the current policies of the Federal Reserve and Obama administration are reversed, the U.S. economic system will collapse well before that."

The looming debt crisis is here.


Advice to buy commodities and natural resources.

TAX AND SPEND:

The EU isn't going to survive this kind of bitterness.

WAR:

NATO forces execute eight teenagers in Afghanistan in mistaken raid.

POLITICS:

Obama is so divisive, he's splitting Democrats including Rahm Emanuel.

Republicans can't get candidates to run for Senate seats they would be likely to win.

Ron Paul lays out his agenda if he was president. I think the president has a duty to do more. Paul wants to transition to a constitutional government, but the president has no legal authority to run an unconstitutional government during such a transition. From the moment a president is sworn in, he must obey the law, and that means get the government in line with the Constitution. He has to shut down the Dept. of Education, the FCC, the FTC, the FDA, and all other unconstitutional government bureaucracies, shut down all welfare programs, corporate and individual, stop enforcing all unconstitutional laws, and so on. You can't say you're continuing welfare out of compassion for those on welfare, because that means you're continuing to take money from others by force and give it to welfare recipients. There's nothing compassionate about theft. Welfare recipients will have 2 and half months between the election and the swearing-in to make whatever arrangements they want to make. That doesn't mean shutting down Social Security and Medicare. Those aren't welfare because the people who receive the benefits paid into the program. Those programs need to be transitioned to be sustainable while continuing to take care of seniors and preferably phased out over time.

LOCAL:

This sure looks like corruption to me.

MISC:

Private ownership of renewable resources is the key to making them last and thrive.

The president must also shut down this American Community Survey.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

The US is still shedding jobs, but because it shed fewer jobs than experts predicted, stocks rose and this article wants us to think everything is rosy. How stupid do they think we are? A year and half after the crash, we're still losing jobs. The GDP and stock prices are artificially and destructively inflated by the Fed. They have no real meaning. Jobs mean something, and our economy is still going downhill. The aggregator headline called this a surprise. The word expert doesn't mean what it used to mean anymore. Expert is supposed to mean somebody who knows enough to get the predictions right, not somebody who's repeatedly surprised by reality. Another report says unemployment remains unchanged. Obviously both these reports can't be accurate. Government statistics are a fraud designed to make the government look as good as possible.

How the coming union pension plan collapse is affecting decision at the White House. With long list of collapsing pension funds.

TAX AND SPEND:

I think this essay by Mark Steyn comparing the US government's fiscal crisis to the Greek fiscal crisis is one of the weakest Steyn essays I've ever read, but people keep linking it everywhere I look, so maybe I'm wrong. I'll link it just in case. But I think others are linking it because of the subject matter, not because it's insightful or clever.

"What's happening in the developed world today isn't so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they've reached the next stage in social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1, or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: 10 grandparents have six kids have four grandkids - i.e., the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 "lowest-low" fertility - the point from which no society has ever recovered. And compared to Spain and Italy, Greece has the least worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe."

This is a rehash of the info in his great book, America Alone. Everywhere government dominates people's lives, the fertility rate craters. Communist countries have it worst. Japan and European welfare states next. The US is on the verge of demographic collapse under the weight of big government next.

"We hard-hearted, small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek protests make plain, nothing makes an individual more selfish than the socially equitable communitarianism of big government."

I keep saying that it isn't the people working in the private sector earning a living who are greedy. Earning wealth is not greedy. Greed is taking wealth from others by force. Thieves are greedy. Aristocrats are greedy. Bureaucrats are greedy. Welfare recipients are greedy. Politically connected corporations and labor unions which use government to extract unearned benefits from others are greedy.

"The problem is there are never enough of "the rich" to fund the entitlement state, because in the end, it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they've run out Greeks, so they'll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?"

That's a pretty good ending. Actually, I like the whole essay a lot better the second time around, but it's still basically a rehash of America Alone, and it lacks Steyn's usual wit and humor. Maybe the problem is not enough people read America Alone.

How come Greece suddenly doesn't need financial help and investors bought newly issued Greek bonds? Something changed, and this article isn't reporting it.

HEALTH CARE:

Obama admits Obamacare is just a next step on the road to socialized medicine.

The Heritage Foundation explains why all this talk of passing health care using reconciliation is virtually impossible. Democrats are lying to us to make us think this is fait accompli. It's not. I bet that health care won't be passed this year either, and Obama will have wasted two years of prime opportunity for oppression on this overreach. Another hurdle for House Democrats is trusting Obama and Harry Reid.

"President Obama may wind up just signing the Senate bill into law no changes whatsoever -- preserving some of the most egregious elements that made the Senate bill such a public lightning rod.

These include not just the "Cornhusker Kickback," "Louisiana Purchase" and other special-interest deals rolled into the Senate bill last December to buy wavering Democratic votes. Democrats also would have to explain all over again why 800,000 seniors in Florida will be spared Medicare Advantage cuts, while those elsewhere won't."

I bet this is Obama's real plan. Obama considers his own party to be useful idiots. They think they're making a better country through government force. Obama knows better. He's using government force to destroy America and spark a Marxist revolution. Obama thinks like Lenin - the worse the better. Obama hasn't called for reconciliation. He doesn't need reconciliation. He just needs the House to pass the Senate bill, then he can sign it into law and the deed is done. House Democrats would be fools to trust the Liar-in-Chief and Harry Reid.

Democrats hid the doc fix in the jobs bill so they could claim Obamacare is cheaper (at over $1 trillion) than it actually is.

POLICE STATE:

Interesting contrast to the response of a shooting at a government facility versus a shooting in the civilian world.

WAR:

White House considers military trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. Better late than never. This guy should have been tried years ago.

Man walks into the Pentagon and starts shooting. I'm afraid as government gets more oppressive by the day, this is going to become commonplace as government pushes more and more citizens over the edge. Don't expect government to reconsider why it's pushing people over the edge,  let alone reverse course. Don't they have metal detectors at the Pentagon?

Free kibbles

STATES RIGHTS:

Wyoming Senate unanimously passes law nullifying the federal government's power over firearms manufactured, sold and used in Wyoming, joining Tennessee and Montana.

ECONOMY:

This is why unemployment isn't getting better.

"Why would an employer want to hire when he must incur all of the following:

• 
  
  

  Pressures to hire on factors other than merit: gender, race, sexual orientation, older workers. And now, efforts are accelerating to passlaws that would prohibit an employer from not hiring someone just because he committed a felony.

  
  
  

  Even if an employer's intent is non-discriminatory, if a decision to hire, promote, or terminate employees has "disparate impact," on one gender, racial group, or workers over 40, that may be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit against the employer.

• 
  
  

  Large and complicated payroll costs beyond salary: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Workers Compensation, Unemployment Insurance (up to 79 weeks), plus various state and local levies.

• 
  
  

  Mandated leave: 12 weeks per year with rights of rehiring (the Family and Medical Leave Act) which may be expanded by the '"Healthy Families Act," which would mandate up to 56 hours of paid sick leave to take care of themselves or a family member very loosely defined: "anyone closely associated with an employee."

• 
  
  

  The Americans with Disabilities Act, in addition to adding pressure on employers to hire people with physical and mental disabilities, requires employers to provide "reasonable accommodations" for all such employees.

• 
  
  

  Laws granting plaintiffs lower burdens of proof regarding discrimination as well as sexual harassment. For example, an employer can be held liable for an employee's being harassed, even if the employer is unaware that the harassment occurred. The financial and human costs of defending such lawsuits are enormous.

• 
  
  

  The proposed health care legislation will force employers to pay for the ever-escalating health care costs.

• 
  
  

  New legislation makes it easier for workers to organize into unions, which, of course, increases employer costs while making it often prohibitively difficult to fire even low-performing employees.

If you ran a business, wouldn't all those mandates make you want to hire as few people as absolutely possible – even if the taxpayers gave you $5,000 per? That certainly wouldn't seduce me – I'd rather stay small than endure all those burdens and increased risk of having to close down my business."

Government is doing everything wrong.

Any essay that begins like this, "If you believe that we have "escaped" from the mess that gripped this nation in 2008 and 2009, or that said mess "suddenly appeared" and "nobody saw it coming", stop reading now" is worth reading. Shortly after the crash hit, a few people in the press pointed out that the Austrians had predicted it. A year and a half later, the louder, false message that nobody predicted it has won out. Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and Paul Krugman failed to predict it, but we're counting on their expertise to get us out. Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and a host of Austrians predicted it, but nobody's listening to their advice on remedying the situation.  In what world does that make sense?

"So let's cut the crap - we are in a Depression right now.  We are pretending we are not, just like you can pretend you didn't really lose your job so long as your credit card does not reach its limit.  We have been in that depression for about 18 months and there is no evidence that we will exit it, as we have yet to find a way to pull back the deficit spending without an instantaneous collapse in the economy.

Yet at some point we must and will stop.  We will either do so of our own volition, or we will do so when the cost of borrowing skyrockets, as others get tired of funding our profligacy.  If we attempt to "print" our way out of it the cost of petroleum products will shoot the moon and destroy our economy anyway."

The truth hurts.

"It appears that AIG - the company we have bailed out (thus far) to the tune of some $100 billion plus, in fact isn't done.  It appears they may have written credit protection on Greece.  If this allegation by the German equivalent to The New York Times is true Americans are going to be asked to pay billions of dollars - or more likely, hundreds of billions (since Greece is almost certainly not the only place - try Spain, Portugal, Ireland, etc) to bail out a bunch of FOREIGN NATIONS."

Oh, man. I'll bet government never checked into that. This degenerates into a boring rant.

TAX AND SPEND:

Government bonds are another government Ponzi scheme.

More kids eating free lunch at schools. There's no such thing as a free lunch, but of course people are willing to take other people's money when government makes it legal.

Obama signs into law bill that will tax visitors to the US in order to promote visiting the US. You can't make this stuff up.

Transportation secretary says it's fun playing Santa Claus with other people's money. You really can't make this stuff up.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

It really is too bad that Rothbard and Friedman aren't alive to see Rothbard proven correct about the Great Depression and Friedman proven wrong. The Fed had no power to expand the money supply back then just like it has no power to expand it now. Banks wouldn't loan then just like they won't loan now.

"A short, terrible downturn may have been turned into a decade's worth of agony or worse. Of course, it doesn't have to be that bad for everyone. We can still buy gold and silver and take delivery. We can trim our debts and streamline our finances. We can do for ourselves, all the sensible things that government – and those who stand behind it – will not."

Friedman seemed a big enough man to admit he was wrong unlike all the poseur economists of today, and that might have saved us all from this Greater Depression government is hell bent of forcing on us.

HEALTH CARE:

According to Boortz, Obama and Democrats have declared health care war on America. I've been making the case that our government is conquering America, and we're empowering it to do so. This is more evidence. It's the aristocrats versus the people, it's been that way for 100 years (more actually), and we're losing big-time. We're not losing just because Barack Obama won the White House. He's wielding all the power we've surrendered to government since the Constitution was ratified against us. We've surrendered power to Congress after Congress and president after president, and consequence of our failure to defend our rights and our freedom for the last 230 years is Barack Obama and Democrats attacking us on all fronts. This isn't one anomalous data point. It's the inevitable culmination of the votes of generations of Americans who didn't take their freedom seriously, who didn't understand the nature of government and who looked to one party to protect them from the other instead of looking to themselves to protect every American from government. President Obama didn't make half the people in America dependent on government. That took 100 years of voters enabling it to happen.

"I put the primary blame government schools for leading us down this path. For generations they have brainwashed millions of children into believing that government exists to solve all of our problems. What would you expect, though, from a government school?

Maybe you've never thought about this way ... but let's draw some comparisons on different types of education:

If you send your child to a Catholic school it stands to reason that they're going to learn that the Catholic church ought to be the very foundation for their lives.

If you send your child to a Hebrew academy they're going to be taught the religion and culture of Judaism.

So ... if you send your child to a government school why in the world would you expect them to be taught anything but that government is to be their very foundation and religion?

When troubles arise the person who went to the Catholic school will turn to his Catholic faith; the person educated in a Jewish school will turn to his Jewish faith, and the person educated in a government school will turn to ... what else? The government."

That's super insight, but it's not complete. It wasn't just government schools. The eroding of constitutional rights and the rule of law began the day the Constitution was ratified. John Adams signed the blatantly unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts. Abraham Lincoln killed 600,000 Americans so he could rule over the southern states. Then in 1917 they passed the income tax, created the Federal Reserve and began the popular election of Senators. This process began long before the government monopoly on schools, but that certainly accelerated the process.

I just got an email from a guy about writing letters, making phone calls and honking horns to remind Congress we don't want Obamacare forced down our throats. That's fine as far as it goes, but it's not enough. In fact, it's the kind of distraction that could help Obama because it makes us think we're doing something when the something we're doing is not nearly enough. Here's the reply I sent him:

"These ideas are OK, but they're too wimpy for the Chicago-style political war being waged against us. They know what we want. They just don't care. They're counting on us bringing petitions to a gun fight, and that's what you're advocating. We need a powerful response to this powerful threat. We need to organize a couple of million people to march on Washington before this vote carrying plastic pitchforks and torches. We need civil disobedience. We need more than letters and honking horns, we need substance and we need it now or it's going to be too late. We need to make it clear they are pushing the American people over a line they don't want us to cross."

The first organization that sells plastic pitchforks and torches is going to make a fortune. If we could get millions into D.C., we could block every street radiating out from the capital, keeping legislators from reaching Congress. That's civil disobedience that would get their attention.

Obama appoints brother of Democrat undecided on health care as Appeals Court judge. It's nice to be the king.

Obama has to overcome three groups of Democrats in the House: liberals, moderates and anti-abortionists.

Democrat says that health savings accounts, people keeping their own money and spending it on health care, go against Democrat's principles.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Obama to seize 10 million energy rich, productive acres of land from Montana to New Mexico by executive fiat. Obama is a monster, and all those people who didn't realize that before the election should never vote again.

WAR ON DRUGS:

How the US war on drugs destabilizes Mexico.

"Bear in mind that anti-Americanism thrives here and throughout Latin America. Much of it is justified; some of it isn’t. The US population, the most comprehensively ignorant of the advanced world, knows nothing of the reasons or of the countries. But the hostility is real. Shrugging it off could prove a mistake.

If Mexicans had to choose between the drug lords, who are often seen as counter-culture heroes, and the US, seen as an enemy too dangerous to be openly called an enemy, many would go with their compatriots in the drug trade. A repertoire of narco-corridos, songs glorifying the narcos, exists. Los Tigres del Norte in Sinaloa have specialized in these.

...

There is something called the Merida Initiative, in which the US supplies money and advice to transform Mexican society to combat the narcos."

Another example of just how badly our government is hurting our country through bad domestic policy and foreign intervention.

POLICE STATE:

On what grounds does the police department order a family to cover their nude Venus de Milo snow sculpture, embarrassed or not? If a neighbor doesn't like it, the neighbor can look the other way.

New York City cops arrest teens to fill quotas.

"Adil Polanco, a five-year veteran of the NYPD’s 41st Precinct in the Bronx, confirmed to WABC that police are under relentless official pressure to make arrests and issue summonses in order to meet arbitrary quotas.

“We are stopping kids walking upstairs to their house, stopping kids going to the store, young adults … [i]n order to keep the quota,” discloses Officer Polanco. “Our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them.”"

Cops brutalize people, commit perjury and get away with all kinds of other bad acts, but I bet this guy gets fired for telling the truth.

"An unjustified arrest is an act of kidnapping. What Officer Polanco describes and WABC documents is nothing less than the systematic abduction of innocent people under color of state “authority.”"

The problem is the law allows them to get away with this stuff.

"Five years ago Cincinnati police officer Vincent George filed a grievance with the police union against the department’s use of arrest and ticket quotas. Like other Cincinnati police officers who failed or refused to meet those quotas, George suffered immediate professional retaliation in the form of a demotion to overnight desk duty."

That's how it works.

"As the Greater Depression deepens,  municipal revenue streams are being choked off and job opportunities are evaporating. Thus police are under ever-increasing pressure to carry out the predatory practice of  “taxation by citation” – with the prospect of financial ruin if they fail to produce the required number of “criminals.”"

Ohio is leading the way in funding government through fines. It's crazy. For the overwhelming majority of Americans, the most dangerous situation they will ever face is dealing with the uniformed tax collectors.

WAR:

Muslim cleric issues fatwa condemning terrorism. That's great, and we'd see more of this if we'd quit waging war against half the Middle East.

Pakistan army claims victory against Taliban and al Qaeda at key point on Afghan border. That's good news.

Afghan's skeptical of the government-in-a-box being forced on them by US marines. Sometimes it just seems unbelievable what the US has become.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The US should not get involved in a conflict between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falklands. Britain would be smart to negotiate giving the Falklands back.

POLITICS:

The ethics investigation of Charlie Rangel is expanding. Prosecutors should be investigating.

It looks like unelected New York Governor Patterson is being pressured to resign. Maybe the people of New York should just get rid of the position of governor or at least change it's name to Chief of Corruption. Maybe they can appoint Charlie Rangel.

MISC:

Atheists at UT San Antonio are trading porn for bibles.

Revel in the hypocrisy.

"An anti-gay California state senator was placed under arrest for drunk driving after leaving a gay bar. A male passenger was in the vehicle along with the lawmaker was not arrested, reported Sacramento CBS affiliate Channel 13."

He doth protest too much. This cracks me up. The article goes a long time before pointing out the hypocrite is a Republican.


Why is Congress debating the Armenian massacre? I guess this is what Obama means when he says he's focused on jobs. Where does the US government get the authority to pass judgment on the Armenian massacre? Turkey recalls US ambassador over vote. This is what we get for government sticking its nose in something that's not its business.


Scientists discover 60,000 year old writing on egg shells.

New technology can read touches on your arm to control devices.

Why do we let people who can't make a living other than by taking money from us by force tell us what we can and can't do?

Cato scholar in online debate about trade.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

GM may have picked up sales from the public flogging of Toyota, but Ford outsold GM for the first time since 1998.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

For a few days last year, Time Warner didn't carry one of the network stations as they negotiated a new contract. Nobody called for government to force Time Warner to carry that station. But that's exactly what net neutrality is. It's calling for the government to make sure the ISPs carry all the content of the content providers. The government has no business interfering in that. the ISPs and content providers should work it themselves.


RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Cato thinks the Supreme Court will uphold the right to keep and bear arms and strike down city handgun bans but not empower the 14th amendment.

"Chief Justice Roberts expressed reluctance at having to overturn the 1873 Slaughterhouse Cases and other justices joined in concerns over how activist judges would use the Clause if the Court revived it — even if that were the path that hewed more closely to the constitution’s true meaning."

The justices seemed to have the same problem with centralized power in the 14 amendment that I do, but I don't know why. They don't mind centralized power anywhere else. I understand the justices problem. If they overturn Slaughterhouse, federal judges would begin making new laws right and left. Everything a judge personally considers important would become a constitutionally protected right. Judges would invent rights like the right to nice sheets and a bubble bath before bed, etc. That power would lead to judicial tyranny we can hardly imagine. The problem is, the court is supposed to follow the law - and the highest law of the land is the Constitution - not precedent, and let the chips fall where they may. I understand why the states passed the 14th amendment after the civil war, but it's a bad amendment because it centralizes authority in the federal government. It should have limited itself to outlawing slavery and discrimination by government.

ECONOMY:

Peter Schiff explains why our economy is not recovering. Government won't let it.

TAX AND SPEND:

Obama named SEIU chief to his tax hike panel. If you're not convinced this panel is all about new taxes and wealth redistribution, read what he has to say.

"We now have a new metric. The president says he wants to judge the new economy whether it increases the number of people in the middle class. Whether we have shared prosperity, not just growth. Which is a fundamental different philosophy then what we've seen in this country to date. Now how do we distribute wealth in this country ... clearly government has a major opportunity to distribute wealth - from the EITC, from tax policies, from minimum wages, from living wages - the government has a role in distributing wealth and social benefits. We are at historic crossroads ... in terms of what our new president is trying to do and a different way we are going to try and evaluate the economy. And so all of sudden we are witnessing the first new American economic plan led by the government, not necessarily by the private sector."

This is what Americans voted for, and this is what they deserve.


Social Security will go into the red this year. Medicare has been in the red for two years.


FEDERAL RESERVE:


Never trust the government.

""If there had been no bailout and no stimulus, it would have been a depression for sure. Hey, it's been bad, but if not for the wise men at Treasury and the Fed, we'd all be standing in soup lines or selling apples on street corners. Prices would plummet, we'd all be doomed.""

What's the difference between welfare and standing in soup lines? This gets back to what's seen versus what's unseen. Welfare is the invisible soup line. It's a way of hiding those trapped in poverty so we don't have to see them.

"While many economists and historians believe that falling prices equal bad times, that's just not true. Falling prices in the United States mean dollars are worth more. If the price of goods and services are falling, more and more people in all income brackets can enjoy the fruits that the efficiencies of free-market capitalism can provide."

Deflation is not the problem. Deflation makes us all more wealthy because can buy more stuff for the same amount of money. And in our current environment, deflation is what will weed out the zombie companies - those being propped up by government - from the profitable companies - those government is stealing from to prop up the zombie companies.

"Bankruptcies do little economic harm. The economy would return to prosperity quickly if the government would just let the markets operate and let inefficient firms go broke.

But General Motors, Chrysler, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Citigroup, and of course AIG and Goldman Sachs are still with us, propped up directly with taxpayer dollars, and zero interest rates. Just last week Fed Chairman and 2009 Man of the Year Ben Bernanke reiterated that central-bank officials expect the Fed's key short-term interest rate to remain at a record low near zero for an "extended period" — generally understood to be for at least several months.

And while Bernanke believes "most indicators suggest that inflation likely will be subdued for some time," John Williams at Shadowstats.com, who measures price inflation the way they did in the old days, says price inflation is running nearly 10% per annum."

This essay, actually a speech, is a wonderful read showing how the supposed collapse of our economy in 2008 was baloney and comparing it to the crash of 1873 which, because it ran its course, led to the most prosperous decade in American history.

EDUCATION:


German family granted asylum in the US because they want to home-school their children and that's illegal in Germany. That's a victory for freedom.


HEALTH CARE:


There's a movement to pressure Democrats into reviving the public option in reconciliation even though that's clearly against the rules. I'm not providing a link.


Obama declares the debate on health care is over, he's incorporated Republican ideas, and the people want it passed. The problem is all of these are lies. Pelosi is an expert at twisting the arms of her party members to get them to vote her way, but of her main arm-twisters, John Murtha died and Charlie Rangel just stepped down from his chairmainship. The Democrats are a sinking ship, but they might get off one last deadly shot.


GLOBAL WARMING:


Britain experiences coldest winter in 31 years.

WAR:

Worrying about martial law, author reports that the Democrats extended the Patriot Act with no debate and no resistance. Remember when the Patriot Act was tyrannical and oppressive under George Bush? Apparently it's pretty and smells nice under Barack Obama. This tells us everything we need to know about the two parties. They're frauds when in the minority. The Democrats were frauds when complaining about the Patriot Act and the wars under George Bush and the Republicans are frauds complaining about big government and debt under Barack Obama. Stop drinking the kool-aid and vote third party.

POLITICS:

Charlie Rangel temporarily steps down as Ways and Means chairman. Maybe somebody's getting a clue.

Ron Paul wins 81 percent in his primary against supposed tea party candidates. The establishment Republicans went all out to defeat Paul, and he creamed them.

Boortz is mostly right when he says:

"If the American people don't do what needs to be done this November .. change the balance of power in Washington DC ... remove these dangerous Democrats from power ... then our children, our grandchildren and history itself will curse us for what we did to America in the 2008 election."

One place he's wrong is in giving Republicans credit. Their sudden appearance of fiscal responsibility is sham brought on by losing power. If Republicans take one or both chambers of Congress, they'll fall all over themselves trying to compromise our freedom away. Another place is in thinking this is some sudden event. Obama is building on George Bush's power grabs, and Bush built on 100 years of power grabs before him. Redistribution of wealth began 100 years ago with the income tax. It's been steadily increasing. Both Republicans and Democrats support it. Obama isn't doing anything fundamentally different from the Republicans and Democrats before him. It's only a matter of degree.


Naturally Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is ranked the most liberal. Good job, Ohio.

Democrat mommies and Republican daddies. I get how Republican policies ostensibly safeguard (though they don't in reality), but I don't know how Democrats policies can be said to nurture. Welfare doesn't nurture any more than food somebody scavenges out of a trash can.

If everything continues the way it's gone so far, Obama will be a one term president. But I'm not betting on it yet.

MISC:

I have no problem with government charging people for emergency services, but those services have to be used in order to charge. There should be no taxes for emergency services, just charges for using them. Of course those services would be high quality and cheaper if provided by competing private sector businesses.

Say's law of economics:

"only that which has been produced can be consumed and only that which has been saved is available to be invested."

Printing money has no effect on this law.


Organization advocates taking your money out of big banks and putting it in small banks. I love this idea. I love the idea of taking your money out of all banks and putting it in credit unions even better. Let's highlight the fraudulent banking system in America this way.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Interesting intersection of stories. First, The New York Times reports that GM sees gains from Toyota's flogging. At the same time, the BBC reports that GM recalled 1.3 million cars over a power steering problem. Wanna take bets on whether or not Congress publicly flogs GM execs?

"GM blamed the fault on a supplier partially owned by Toyota."

How funny. GM execs are like the cat who swallowed the canary.

ECONOMY:

Obama is already preparing his argument for rising unemployment - the weather.

TAX AND SPEND:

Pressure in Europe to transform the EU economic coalition into a European central government to avoid financial crises like the PIGS crisis in the future. Crises are always used to expand government and expand power of a central government.

Ron Paul says the US will never pay of its debt. There's no such thing as good government. It's impossible that an institution based on violence against the citizens and funded by taking money from them by force can be anything but harmful. All government is bad, and bigger government is worse.

Ron Paul returns $100,000 of his budget.

"Like him or hate him, Dr. Ron Paul doesn’t just talk a big game about fiscal conservatism, he lives it. In 2008, his congressional office returned $58,000 to the Treasury. In 2009, his office returned $90,000. Now, according to an official press release, Dr. Ron Paul’s congressional office has just paid back $100,000.

At a time when Wall St is running wild, the national debt is $14 trillion, and the federal government is running $1.4 trillion deficits, Dr. Ron Paul’s congressional office is running a surplus and paying back the American people."

This is the kind of government conservative claim they want. I want to see them put their votes where their mouths are. Boortz even took note of this is his reading assignments, and Boortz never mentions Ron Paul except to slam his supporters. Maybe webwench snuck it in while he wasn't looking.

It's no surprise that a government monopoly service, in this case the Post Office, expects to see $238 billion in losses over the next 10 years. It's also no surprise that those losses are exacerbated by political concerns instead of market forces. That's the nature of government. That's the nature of monopolies. It's a double whammy.

For the first time since the Great Depression, Americans received more money from government than they paid in. That's not sustainable.

I just went back and looked at my essay America's Looming Debt Crisis I wrote two years ago, and it's astonishing how accurate I was. The only thing is, the crisis is starting sooner than I expected, and it's going to get worse than I expected because we didn't elect the only candidate in the race who had the prescription to the crisis - Ron Paul.

Good for Jim Bunning for holding up more unemployment benefits until they get paid for. Isn't funny how aristocrats suddenly become responsible when their party is in the minority and they're retiring?

$280.85 in food stamps buys $50 cash, two bottles of liquor, two porn DVDs and two Viagra in Detroit. Good think Congress just increased the food stamp budget. Have I mentioned how government interference in our lives degrades society? Yes I have.

REGULATION:

I don't believe this article. It claims that if the accelerator of a car was depressed, that a car's computer might ignore the brake.

"Without the system, a car’s computer might think a driver wants to keep accelerating, and ignore a driver’s efforts to depress the brake pedal and stop the car."

That's absurd. No engineer in his right mind would design a system like that. No system like that would pass design review. This is a leftist paper spouting propaganda for bigger government. That doesn't mean that brakes have to deactivate the accelerator, but there's no way that the accelerator deactivates brakes as this article claims.

States have no business banning credit checks of potential employees by employers. That information is available to the public, so businesses can check it if they want. If these bans are passed, they won't work. It'll create a black market in credit checks.

EDUCATION:

Government schools paying tuition of violent students to send them to private school. It would be more honest to ban private schools outright, but it's more convenient to use them as a dumping ground for their failures.

I'm all for firing staff and shutting down failing schools, but where does Obama get that power and why does that cost more money? That should save money, and Obama doesn't own the schools. Besides which, teachers unions won't stand for it. This idea seems doomed from the start. I wonder if this is another distraction, and nothing is supposed to come of it except more money dumped in the black hole of government schools.

GLOBAL WARMING:

Pat Buchanan weighs in on Al Gore and Co.'s great climate hoax.

Fossil fuels are less harmful to the environment than grown fuels mainly because people cut down forests to grow alternate fuels.

POLICE STATE:

Brooklyn prosecutors clear ACORN over giving advice on how to run an underage prostitution ring, then they went back to prosecuting little old ladies on trumped up charges of cheating at bridge. I don't know if what those ACORN goons did was a crime since the guy recording the video wasn't really trying to set up a prostitution ring. I hope it wasn't. I don't want prosecutors prosecuting people for advice based on a false premise because if that was allowed, prosecutors would sting and prosecute every person they didn't like. But if I had given that advice on tape, you can bet they would have prosecuted me because I have no political connections. You can bet they would have shut down the organization I worked for because it had no political connections. The politically connected are typically above the law, and the rest of us are typically below it. The rule of law is an illusion in America. Eliot Spitzer wasn't prosecuted, prosecutors conveniently couldn't find enough evidence, and he's considering returning to politics. The rare case of William Jefferson getting prosecuted is just to hold up the illusion.

POLITICS:

Boortz compiles a list of many instances of corruption by Charlie Rangel we know about. The list we don't know about is much longer.

MEDIA:

In another example of how the mainstream media is committing suicide by not reporting the news that matters, the Washington Post discusses 10 possible Republican presidential candidates, mentioning CPAC in the article, but does not mention Ron Paul. This is dereliction of duty. Nobody wants to read a paper that covers up the important stories or important aspects of stories, but the mainstream media does that about every story.

LOCAL:

It makes no sense to me that demand

"for pediatric subspecialty services has more than doubled in the past 12 years, with total clinic visits to specialists growing from 29,445 to 60,770."

Why?

"Medical advances have helped more children with complicated medical conditions survive and be treated outside of hospitals. That has driven up demand for pediatric specialists, said Lawrence McAndrews, president/CEO of the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions."

I don't believe this. That many children didn't die 12 years ago who now live today to make this difference. And there aren't more kids in Dayton. Dayton's population is cratering and growing older. This has got to be the product of the medical community convincing more parents that there's something wrong with their children when in the past they would have been considered normal.

Montgomery County is the Ohio leader in prescription drug overdoses. That's not a category we want to lead in. We should be the leader in cutting taxes and government spending greatly reduce problems like this.

It's nice to see scientists talk about something I've been talking about for years - that society affects our genes just like our genes affect society. Muslims, Hindus, Africans and others are not like us, and the differences aren't just cultural. We don't understand each other not only because of our different experiences, but because of our different genetic biases. Their culture has driven their evolution along a different path than Judeo-Christian culture has driven most westerners. The same is true of every different culture. That's why the best way to interact with individuals of any other culture is through a system of voluntary exchange.

Free kibbles

LIBERTY:

UK officials want to require competency tests before subjects can own a pet.

SOCIALISM:

Unions in action:

"A striking union at Vale Inco in Canada has engaged in "union thuggery" according a lawsuit filed by the company. The United Steelworkers Local 6500 and many of its members have resorted to intimidation and violence against people who continue to work during the strike. They have posted pictures and personal information like addresses and phone numbers on the union website and Facebook page. The workers who have been singled out have had their property and homes vandalized, they've received threatening phone calls and been physically assaulted. Meanwhile on the picket line, roads leading to the plant have been littered with nail spikes and they have set large fires to prevent anyone from coming to work."

This is what happens when government gives some people the power of coercion.


A brief, illustrated history of public sector unions. Video of Obama leading SEIU chant at SEIU campaign rally. Unions frustrated with Obama and Democrats. Me too, but for the opposite reasons.


RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:


I'm not thrilled with this upcoming gun-control case in front of the Supreme Court. The case takes the position that the 14th amendment projects the 2nd amendment onto state and local governments. I don't like that idea. The right to keep and bear arms is a natural right. It's not granted by the 2nd amendment. It's not granted by the 14th amendment. It's granted by nature and the 2nd amendment is merely an acknowledgment of that natural right. We have the right to keep and bear arms regardless of the 2nd or 14th amendments. I understand the attorneys picked a strategy they felt most likely to lead to victory, but that strategy undermines our natural rights by pretending that government determines them, not us. It also undermines freedom by arguing that the federal government as a central power can dictate to state and local governments. The people of Chicago should take up arms in mass and peacefully march on city hall to exercise their right to keep and bear arms and erase that illegal gun control law.


ATF seizes toy guns to destroy them because they can be converted into automatic weapons that fire soft pellet BBs. I often complain that government isn't good at anything, but it's really good at oppression.


Starbucks refuses to become a gun free zone. I'm surprised since Starbucks is beloved by liberals. But the coffee is still way overpriced.


ECONOMY:


Like prices, profits carry important information that guides entrepreneurs and producers to allocate scarce resources to the goods and services people want most.


TAX AND SPEND:


California a greater risk than Greece. That's because California's economy and fiscal crisis is so much bigger.


Anybody who claims that unemployment benefits don't increase unemployment is lying. Nobody is so stupid they don't understand that.


FEDERAL RESERVE:


The Fed has already spent more $4 trillion on bailouts. Why does it need statutory authority now? Maybe this just expands the number of entities that receive a bailout. This might be a way to for Congress to hide all future bailouts so the aristocrats don't have to take responsibility.


Why shouldn't Soros or anybody else cash in on the collapse of the euro? I wish I could cash in on it.


HEALTH CARE:


Health savings accounts work because they empower people to control their own health care costs, but they're a big-government solution to a problem created by big-government - the income tax and government dominated health care. The real solution is to get rid of the income tax and get government out of our health care.

POLICE STATE:

Maryland suffers 4.5 SWAT raids per day. That's incredible.

"Over the last six months of 2009, SWAT teams were deployed 804 times in the state of Maryland, or about 4.5 times per day. In Prince George's County alone, with its 850,000 residents, a SWAT team was deployed about once per day. According to a Baltimore Sun analysis, 94 percent of the state's SWAT deployments were used to serve search or arrest warrants, leaving just 6 percent in response to the kinds of barricades, bank robberies, hostage takings, and emergency situations for which SWAT teams were originally intended.

Worse even than those dreary numbers is the fact that more than half of the county’s SWAT deployments were for misdemeanors and nonserious felonies. That means more than 100 times last year Prince George’s County brought state-sanctioned violence to confront people suspected of nonviolent crimes. And that's just one county in Maryland. These outrageous numbers should provide a long-overdue wake-up call to public officials about how far the pendulum has swung toward institutionalized police brutality against its citizenry, usually in the name of the drug war. "

No kidding.

WAR:

Obama plans dramatic, unilateral nuclear arms reductions. What? Why would we give up our nuclear advantage? I'm all for reducing nuclear weapons, but not unilaterally. This is self-imposed gun control for our country, and it will have the same consequences - making us potential victims. Can the president do this on his own? I hope not. I can't help but think this is a political move to regain support from the same pacifists who support gun-control.Or maybe it's an attempt to distract the people from health care oppression.

POLITICS:

Nancy Pelosi woos tea partiers. It's bad enough that big-government Republicans have managed to coopt that movement, but I don't think Democrats have a chance.

Boortz supports health care mandate Romney. He's not allowed to claim he's a libertarian any more.

Charlie Rangel should resign, but he won't.

MEDIA:

In an essay describing how talk radio hosts hate libertarians and Ron Paul, author presents an analogy that conforms to my beliefs more than any I've ever read.

"You are America. You have a choice of riding in 2 vehicles: The "D Racer" or the "R Mobile." Both are speeding toward the brick wall of Tyranny. The only difference – the "D Racer" is going 150 mph; the "R Mobile" 125 mph. In which would you care to meet your certain demise? What? Oh – that OTHER one? The Libertarian "Freedom Machine"? But that one is heading in the opposite direction, toward Liberty. What’s more, Ron Paul and a bunch of Libertarians are driving! How could that be? He is so…so… unelectable!"

I'd have probably put the R Mobile at 140.

"We also learned that Republicans and too many Conservatives continue devolving into "Constitutional Darwinists." That is, their Constitution is "alive," too and slowly devolving from the Original to accommodate the same cultural, societal and governmental changes Liberals do, just in different areas at different speeds for different preferences."

Exactly. No Republican other than Ron Paul supports the plain language of the Constitution. No Republican other than Ron Paul is calling for abolishing the Dept. of Education, the FCC, EPA, etc. on constitutional grounds. If you claim that the Constitution is the highest law of the land and that government must follow it, the only R or D candidate you can support is Ron Paul.

MISC:

Bureaucrats changing non-politically correct names of places. History doesn't matter. Just rewrite it with a stroke of a pen.

Great "don't trust your government" story.

Lincoln as the anti-Jefferson.

Goldman-Sachs hires PR firm of Bush confidant to improve its crooked image. Goldman is smart to be in bed with both parties.