Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

This headline speaks for itself:

"Pub singer arrested for racism after Chinese passers-by hear him perform Kung Fu Fighting"

This happened in Britain, but it'll happen here too.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Summary of Bernanke's press conference. The Fed staff look at computer models to determine policy. A reporter should ask Bernanke to release the before and after models of any given policy so the people can see how accurate they are. He'll never do it because they're never right, but I'd love to see him come up with an excuse to keep them secret from everybody but himself and his cronies.

GLOBAL WARMING:

UN tries to delete record of another bogus climate change prediction.

Of all the places polled by Gallup, only the US has a majority of people who realize global warming is cause by natural processes. Good for us. Bad for everybody else.

"In Sub-Saharan Africa, where 54% are not aware that their climate is alleged to be warming, a mere 22% have heard of the global warming issue and predominantly blame humans for the warming. In undeveloped Asia, 48% are unaware that the climate is warming and 27% predominantly blame humans."

The poorest people who live off the land know that changing climate is normal.

WAR ON DRUGS:

FDA to regulate e-cigarettes.

"Jason Healy, president of e-cigarette maker Blu Cigs, called the news a good first step, but said the pending rule changes will be more beneficial for "weeding out the shady companies."Right now, "you can potentially sell snake oil," Healy said."

As always, the big manufacturer looks to government to wipe out its competition so it can raise prices.

"But unlike nicotine patches or gums, e-smokes have operated in a legal gray area."

Apparently any unregulated produce operates in a very scary legal gray area.

POLICE STATE:

Miss USA claims she was molested by TSA. Funny how Miss USA is singled out for groping. I'm sure all the male agents got a big kick out of this groping by the female agent.

Photo taken by a next-generation body scanner currently being implemented in prisons, soon to be in airport near you. This a powerful reminder that when government thinks of America, they think if all of us in a prison and threatening our jailers. This thing sees your full body all the way to your bones. And you thought the radiation in Japan was dangerous.

WAR:

Afghan military officer being trained by Americans kills eight US trainers.

FOREIGN POLICY:

I'm skeptical of the negative connotations in this article about reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. It seems to me that this is likely to change Hamas for the better. It's likely to allow both groups to better police their territory. I think this improves the chances for peace, and the Israeli government doesn't want that. It gains from perpetual war, and this takes away its major excuse for not reaching peace deal. Plus, US officials are undoubtedly embarrassed that the Palestinians made a peace deal without them involved which shows they shouldn't be involved in anything over there.

POLITICS:

Obama finally releases his real birth certificate.

"He added that the big issues would not be resolved until the birther row was put to bed."

That was true three years ago. Why wait so long? I don't see anything on it that would cause him trouble, but because he waited so long, birthers will probably attack it as a forgery. If he'd have just released it during 2008, this would never have been an issue. Did he hide it to distract from the consequences of his policies? Is Trump really working as an agent provocateur for Obama to keep the people distracted from real issues? Or does the Messiah think he's above all this and shouldn't have to be bothered?

"We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We have better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do."

Like playing golf, basketball and watching ESPN.

"Shortly after the release today, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer' said: 'This whole birther debate has been really bad for the Republican Party.'He added the whole debate over the President's birth was, 'crowding out the debate' on more important issues.

His high-profile allegations about the president's origins appear to have gained traction with voters, with 38 per cent saying they are not convinced he was born in America, according to a recent USA Today-commissioned poll."

Bad for Republicans? So he released it to do the Republicans a favor? How funny. So maybe they calculated as long as Obama was popular, it was in their interest to withhold the document. After Republicans wiped Democrats out in 2010 and Obama's numbers tanked even faster, that was proven disastrously wrong.

"Despite the birthers' claims, the short-form version, issued immediately for $7 to anyone born in Hawaii, is the only one recognised for legal and official purposes by authorities.
Long-form, signed 'certificates of live birth' are held in a Department of Health vault, and under state law they can be examined by public officials, but only if there is a 'direct and tangible interest'.For individuals to get hold of their own birth certificate, they have to go through a lengthy Freedom of Information procedure - one reason why Mr Obama may have delayed publishing his."

I never heard that before. Why wasn't that publicized? I'd never seen a computerized short form before. Every time I lose mine, I always get a new copy of the original, never a computerized version. Arrogance had to play a huge role in his decision not to release it for so long. Maybe this shows he's becoming more humble and responsive to the people. But it seems more likely this has just been a terrible political miscalculation driven by arrogance. I'm glad Obama finally put this to rest. He should have done so three years ago.

Prediction that the timely release of this info will keep Trump in the spotlight, distracting Republicans. I disagree. Trump had already climbed to the top of the heap by championing this issue. This takes away some of his thunder. But the other aspect of this post might be right. It might have been timed to steal thunder from Ron Paul's announcement yesterday. Obama has to fear Ron Paul because his principled anti-war stance will draw a lot of support from Obama's base. Unlike Obama, Ron Paul will also get the government out of marriage so gays can get married if they want and straights can teach their children it's not the same. This is another conflict that could not exist in a free society. These people aren't arguing over the definition of marriage because each individual can have his or her own definition. They're arguing over the government's definition of marriage.


Good for Lew Rockwell for pointing out Ron Paul's new book is a campaign book. Of course its scope is much larger than most, but it's still a campaign book.


MISC:

I'm a little confused by this contention which I read all the time:

"The price-specie-flow mechanism is the quantity theory extrapolated into the case of many countries. The rise in the supply of money in country A will cause its prices to rise; but then the goods of country A are no longer as competitive compared to other countries. Exports will therefore decline, and imports from other countries with cheaper goods will rise."

This is only true if exchange rates remain fixed, but they don't remain fixed. Exchange rates are a price like any other. If the money supply in a country doubles, prices of local goods will double, and the price of foreign currencies in the local currency will double. For a simplistic example, if one dollar equals one euro and a candy bar costs one dollar, it also costs one euro. If the Fed doubles the money supply, the cost of the candy bar rises to two dollars, the cost of the euro rises to two dollars, so a candy bar still costs one euro. No change. Granted this inflation doesn't happen instantly, some prices will go up sooner than others, so there will be temporary fluctuations in the import/export flows based on when inflated prices hit specific products and foreign currencies. Maybe local prices generally rise more quickly because local money is used to by local products much more frequently than to buy foreign currencies.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

The state of the home mortgage market is ugly.

This article is the best I've read at explaining the magnitude of the economic crash that's coming.

EDUCATION:

Taxpayer funded courses in union violence.

POLITICS:

I hope this pollster's prediction that Ron Paul will do better in 2012 than in 2008 is true.

LOCAL:

How can you write an article with this headline:

"Gas prices up, but reason still unclear"

that does not mention the Federal Reserve?

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Propagandists are comparing Republicans to Herbert Hoover, claiming his budget cuts sparked the first depression. But the reality is Hoover was no small government supporter. But neither are modern Republicans.

EDUCATION:

Here's the real reason Americans don't study science and to a lesser extent technology:

"President Obama had a town hall meeting at Facebook's headquarters last week and said that he wanted to encourage females and minorities to pursue STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). However, Pastabagel writes that the need for American students to study STEM is one of the tired refrains in modern American politics and thatplenty of people already study science, but they don't work in science. 'MIT grads are more likely to end up in the financial industry, where quants and traders are very well compensated, than in the semiconductor industry where the spectre of outsourcing to India and Asia will hang over their heads for their entire career.' Philip Greenspun adds that science can be fun, but considered as a career, science suffers by comparison to the professions and the business world. 'The average scientist that I encounter expresses bitterness about (a) low pay, (b) not getting enough credit or references to his or her work, (c) not knowing where the next job is coming from, (d) not having enough money or job security to get married and/or have children,' writes Greenspun. 'Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why any young American would do it.'"

By definition research is far away from the consumer, far away from the money, so it doesn't pay. The bubble created by the Fed and government spending makes this disparity worse.

It turns out that government schools marketing "advanced classes" are marketing the same old classes just hoping for more federal money. Sometimes reporting this crap is depressing. Most times, actually. The nature of government never changes.

HEALTH CARE:

Government stooge criticized for claiming vaccines have no influence on autism. This is going to be ugly. The relationship between vaccines and autism was already ugly, and it't about to get way worse.

POLICE STATE:

TSA screener arrested for child pornography. Gosh, who would have thought that child sexual predators would be drawn to the only job in the world where they can legally molest children?

I'm surprised to see Jeffrey Tucker downplay the iPhone tracking given that Apple did it secretly and police download that data and use it to prosecute people. Synopsis of my response to Tucker:

"Given that Apple did it secretly and police download that data and use it to prosecute people. This is scary. Granted, most people don't realize the danger, but that doesn't make it any less dangerous."
"Also this dovetails into the IP issue. In a free society, this feature couldn't be secret. Many smartphone manufacturers would compete in a robust market, and one of the features they would compete on is privacy versus tracking. The only reason Apple and Android can get away with secretly tracking us, and that they do it secretly is significant, is government grants them patents that protect them from competition.
Jobs is no Randian hero. He's a plutocrat. He uses the looting apparatus of government to advance his own interests at our expense like everyone in the ruling class."

Tucker agrees with my concerns, but stands by his position that Apple did this to satisfy customers. I agree with him on that. It seems like we're all agreeing.

WAR:

WikiLeaks Guantanamo files.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Syrian government rolls tanks into cities. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

"Witnesses say several thousand Syrian army troops, flanked by special forces, shot their way into the southern city of Daraa before dawn Monday, causing numerous casualties. Tanks reportedly began the assault, shelling the city as they moved in from four sides.
Videos distributed by human rights activists show black smoke over the city center and fires burning as shell-fire crackled in the background. 
Reports say Syrian special forces stormed private homes to make arrests, Witnesses say snipers began shooting from rooftops and many victims remain lying in the streets."

This will probably put down the rebellion.

POLITICS:

Praise for Ron Paul's Liberty Defined. I have no doubt this book is good. But I understood liberty years ago. I'm a self-actuated libertarian. Nobody talked me into it. I didn't have to read any books or essays to realize that freedom is the answer. I figured that out by the time I graduated high school without any outside interference. But nobody I knew seemed to realize the same thing all my adult life. I started this blog because of that. I don't need a book to define liberty for me. I appreciate how Ron Paul is taking liberty to the masses, and he's been fabulously successful at it. More successful than me. More power to him. If you get the opportunity, and you don't understand liberty and all its consequences, please buy it. But whether you do or not, please keep reading here.

Free kibbles

KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

ATF tries to chance the definition of a shot-gun so it can bar the import of many.

ECONOMY:

World's most renowned prognosticator predicts food riots in the US in 2012. I've been saying people will starve in the streets. We're still at the very beginning of the greater depression, and most Americans don't realize it.

Prediction that gold and silver will continue to rise as stocks fall.

TAX AND SPEND:

More analysis shows how bankrupt both the Ryan and Obama plans are. None of the bigwigs in Washington are serious about cutting government.

Peter Schiff on the silly Standard & Poors announcement about US government debt.

"Given S&P's concerns that Congress will fail to address its long-term fiscal problems, on what basis can it conclude that the U.S. deserves its AAA credit rating? The highest possible rating should be reserved for fiscally responsible nations where the fiscal outlook is crystal clear. If S&P has genuine concerns that the U.S. will not deal with its out of control deficits, the AAA rating should be reduced right now."

Nobody at S&P thinks the government will ever pay off its debt. It hasn't paid it off since Andrew Jackson.

"The bottom line is that the AAA rating on U.S. sovereign debt is pure politics. S&P simply does not have the integrity to honestly rate U.S. debt. It has too cozy a relationship with the U.S. government and Wall Street to threaten the status quo. In fact, given the culpability of the rating agencies in the financial crisis, it may well be a quid pro quo that as long as the U.S.' AAA rating is maintained, the rating agencies will continue to enjoy their government sanctioned monopolies, and that no criminal or civil charges will be filed related to inappropriately rated mortgage-backed securities."

Government corrupts everything it touches.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The University of Texas endowment fund purchases $1 billion in gold bullion to protect itself from Bernanke and Co.

EDUCATION:

Government has ruined higher education like everything else it touches.

HEALTH CARE:

Health benefits of probiotics.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

British media exposes a global warming fraud group funded by taxpayers that was connected to the whitewashed investigations of climategate.

Parody of Gore and Jones performed to Green Acres intro.

POLICE STATE:

Here's another example of how quickly government is conquering us.

"The family of Elsie Wenzel, a beloved school lunch lady who died at age 71, gathered for a memorial service at a funeral home in Hamilton (a small town near Trenton) on April 15. Charles Wenzel, one of her grandsons, "had ... something like a seizure," related Elsie's widower, Edward, in an interview with The Trentonian. The family called 911 to summon the paramedics. Unfortunately, if you call the paramedics, the police are part of the package deal, whether they're wanted or not – and they have an unfailing talent for making matters worse.When Charles had another convulsion, he committed the unpardonable offense of defiling one of the sanctified bully-boys through physical contact. This constitutes "battery on an officer," and so the offended cop and several of his boyfriends attempted to handcuff Charles while he was lying on the ground receiving medical treatment."We didn't call you for this!" exclaimed a witness as several other people, including a granddaughter of the deceased, tried to intervene to protect Charles from the criminal assault. The officers responded by pepper-spraying the mourners and throwing several of them – including Edward's middle-aged granddaughter – to the ground. One of the officers called in a report that a "riot" was in progress – "riot" being defined as any situation in which Mundanes loudly criticize the anointed purveyors of consecrated violence for their crimes against innocent people. Apparently the funeral parlor was located near a donut shop, because within seconds at least a dozen police vehicles were on the scene.One of Elsie's sons, who was to be a pallbearer at the funeral, was jumped by "seven or eight" of the armed tax-feeders and thrown to the floor of the funeral parlor, Edward Wenzel reported. Another eyewitness who drove by the scene was alarmed to see police swarming four other prone, helpless men.
By one account, at least a half-dozen of the pallbearers were arrested to sent to the hospital as a result of gang violence by the police."

When will we end it is a good question.

WAR:

Theory that the west started a war with Libya to kick China out of Africa and control all of the Med. Somebody bombed Qaddafi's headquarters.

Leaked documents from Guantanamo show:

"Again and again, what stands out from these stories is not some as yet undiscovered horror from the secretive steel-barred and orange-suited compound, but the chaos, the confusion and the casualness of it all. The people who ran this place were not deceived. They too could see that this was not the distillation of evil that the American government claimed it to be, but a shambolic catch from a trawl whose nets had dragged in all sorts of people, many of them by mistake."

That's the problem when the enemy refuses to wear uniforms. There's should have been a process for identifying terrorists from non-terrorists, and maybe they tried to do it, but if they did, they did it badly.

POLITICS:

The tea partiers are livid at Boehner, but until they identify a candidate to run against him and start funneling money into his campaign, it's nothing but hot air. Anybody who expected Republicans to do anything different was fooling themselves.

MISC:

It looks like Atlas Shrugged is a money loser.

The truth about the Titanic.

Blue jeans turn 160.

Which government will fall first: Syria or Libya?

NATO has been bombing Qaddafi forces in support of the rebels for weeks now. The government in Syria has massacred protesters the last several days.

Which government will fall first: Syria or Libya?

Free kibbles

RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS:

Government seizes tea party organizer's guns without due process.

"The following facts are undisputed by both sides of the legal dispute over possession of guns:

• Police in Weston, Connecticut, based in part upon an unsubstantiated FBI statement that Reddy was a "person of interest" in a domestic terrorism investigation, executed a search and seizure warrant at Reddy's home on February 14 that involved the local SWAT team. The police took a pump-action shotgun and an antique revolver from Reddy.

• Walter Reddy has no criminal record of any kind.

• Reddy was never charged with a crime, but his legally held guns were taken from him anyway. He is, however, a widely known constitutional political activist and persistent critic of big government.

• Reddy repeatedly asked for an opportunity to get a lawyer before a February 25 hearing on possession of his guns, and was denied his request

• The chief witness brought by the state against Reddy explicitly stated that Reddy had never acted in a threatening or violent way.

• No other witness even attempted to claim that Reddy was threatening or violent.

"The fact that he wasn't given the opportunity to get a lawyer [for the hearing] is just wrong," Reddy's lawyer Joseph Secola told The New American. "It just seems to me that he was not accorded the necessary due process of law. He asked repeatedly for a continuance to get counsel and it was repeatedly denied.""

Not that a lawyer would have helped, but this shows the lawlessness of government.

ECONOMY:

Despite the best efforts of government including the Fed to keep Americans from fixing the housing market they broke, the American people are succeeding anyway.

"Sales of new single-family homes in February were down more than 80 percent from the 2005 peak, far exceeding the 28 percent drop in existing home sales. New single-family sales are now lower than at any point since the data was first collected in 1963, when the nation had 120 million fewer residents."

The laws of economics are laws of nature and cannot be broken. Any attempt by government to do so can only cause pain and hardship.

Belgium is thriving because its prime minister has been unable to form a government. We should be so lucky. Actually, I don't know if the same would happen here because our federal budget has built in spending increases every year. It gets bigger and more oppressive even if nobody runs it.

A lot of people are saying gold is overvalued. Gold is expensive. Doug Casey dissents, and this chart shows why.


Wow.

"From the ‘60s until about 2000, most Western governments were selling gold from their treasuries, working on the belief it was a “barbarous relic.” Since then, governments in the advancing world – China, India, Russia and many other ex-socialist states – have been buying massive quantities.Why? Because their main monetary asset is U.S. dollars, and they have come to realize those dollars are the unbacked liability of a bankrupt government. They’re becoming hot potatoes, Old Maid cards. But the dollars can be replaced with what? Sovereign wealth funds are using them to buy resources and industries, but those things aren’t money. And in the hands of bureaucrats, they’re guaranteed to be mismanaged. I expect a great deal of gold buying from governments around the world over the next few years. And it will be at much higher dollar prices."

While the BRICS talk, they're buying gold.

"Although gold prices are at an all-time high in nominal terms, they are still nowhere near their highs in real terms, of about $2,500 (depending on how much credibility you give the government’s CPI numbers), reached in 1980. Gold sentiment is still quite subdued among the public; most of them barely know it even exists."

So much for a bubble. Where does he think the price will go?

"A guess? I’ll say the equivalent of about $5,000 an ounce of today’s dollars. And I feel pretty good about that number, considering where we are in the current gold bull market. Classic bull markets have three stages. We’ve long since left the “Stealth” stage – when few people even remembered gold existed, and those who did mocked the idea of owning it. We’re about to leave the “Wall of Worry” stage, when people notice it and the bulls and bears battle back and forth. I’ll conjecture that within the next year we’ll enter the “Mania” stage – when everybody, including governments, is buying gold, out of greed and fear. But also out of prudence."

That's a lot of upside still.

Putting some of your wealth overseas to protect some of you assets from theft by government.

TAX AND SPEND:

Pat Buchanan looks to Europe to see how the US government will collapse under its debt.

"European investors are now demanding and getting 22 percent interest on two-year Greek bonds. And with Greek debt at 150 percent of its gross domestic product – the same as Zimbabwe – the question is no longer whether Athens will default, but when, how and what will be the losses to European citizens, banks and governments who hold Greek paper.Will Greece be the only domino to fall, or will Ireland and Portugal follow and the contagion spread across Europe and leap the Atlantic?"

I had no idea Greece had gone down so fast. That's only the beginning. I don't think it fair to say the US government collapse would be a result of European contagion. The US government will collapse under its own debt regardless. Events in Europe may make that happen sooner rather than later though. Obama is achieving exactly what he wanted: the collapse of the US economy under the burden of government. And Republicans are helping every step of the way. But Obama won't get the Marxist revolution he wants to follow. Americans aren't Europeans. Because we're descendants of a self-selected group of rugged individualist immigrants, when push comes to shove, our libertarian natures will win out.

"And here is where the risk to Obama comes. Playing off Ryan may be smart short-term politics, but if the world financial system were to come crashing down – in part because of the absence of a U.S. deficit deal – no one would blame Paul Ryan."

Obama's betting he and Bernanke can steal enough money over the next year and half to keep the system afloat until he wins in 2012. He thinks that will enable him to orchestrate his Marxist revolution from the White House. I wouldn't take that bet, but I'm surprised every day I wake that the system hasn't collapsed over night.

"The Herbert Hoover of that depression would be Barack Obama."

Herbert Hoover my ass. Compared to the coming depression, which will include the destruction of the dollar, the last one was a walk in the park. After Obama Americans will elect a Republican FDR who runs on a campaign of reducing the size and scope of government only to greatly increase it as soon as he takes office. People ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. Western civilization is collapsing faster than even I thought.

REGULATION:

Bloomberg's government leads the nanny state assault.

"The activities logged on the “risky” list are limited to the more brutal, gladiator-like sports such as wiffle ball, kickball, dodgeball, freeze tag, red rover, and capture the flag. On the right side of the page, take the poll that asks the question, “Do you agree with the Health Department that Wiffle Ball, kickball and Red Rover are dangerous?” When I checked, 83% said yes. Don’t wonder why we have the government we (most of us) deserve."

The sad truth is we have the government we deserve. I love the picture of the kid wrapped in bubble wrap since I've used that example to illustrate the logical conclusion of nanny state activities for years.

The mandatory car insurance scam.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Gary North blasts reports that the BRICS nations are going to do something about international finance.

"This is sound and fury, signifying little. This is grist for journalistic mills. This is chaff, not wheat.
We live in a world of illusion. The goldbrick central banks with their paper gold and endless promises keep us dancing to their tunes. But there is not one tune. There are many. Cacophony rules.Central bankers have only two policies, as gold coin dealer Franklin Sanders has pointed out: inflation and blarney. We are getting lots of both."

These guys may not do anything, but the system is going to change because Bernanke is destroying the dollar.

HEALTH CARE:

Most people don't need to see the dentist every six months.

"Last week, the [British] Government warned the public to ignore dentists who tell us to come for check-ups every six months. In fact, according to experts at the health watchdog, The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), most adults need to have a check-up only every two years."

The dentists must not be paying the government enough. Then again, have you ever seen British teeth?

Study discovers that prostate screening provides no benefit. What a surprise. We know mammograms cause breast cancer. This kind of crap can only happen because of the government control of our food supply and health care system.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The truth about the greens.

"What most people are unaware of is the fascistic hatred of mankind that underlies the philosophic basis of environmentalism."

"At the heart of environmentalism, aside from its wish for far fewer humans, is a hatred of capitalism. The failures of communism and socialism everywhere attest to the way state control of all aspects of life is ignored by Greens.David Foreman, founder of Earth First!, said, "We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects…We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, hold dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wildness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settle land."Thus, agriculture, the key to civilization, is decried as harming the Earth and all manner of business and industrial enterprises, dependent on the provision of energy, is regarded as evil."

And kill billions in the process. That's the green goal.

April blizzard in northeast blamed on global warming. Apparently the hotter the planet gets, more we get buried in snow earlier and later.

POLICE STATE:

On the pandemic of police brutality.

"Yet another disturbing aspect is that a minority of citizens will justify each act of police brutality no matter how brutal and how unprovoked. For example, WNDU.com's poll of its viewers found that 64.2% agreed that Snyder was a victim of police brutality, but 27.8% thought that Snyder got what was coming to him. "Law and order conservatives" and other authoritarian personalities invariably defend acts of police brutality. Perhaps the police brutality pandemic will bring the day when we will be able to say that a civil libertarian is a law and order conservative who has been brutalized by police."

Once again, we get the government we deserve.

"Police forces have always attracted bullies with authoritative personalities who desire to beat senseless anyone who does not quake in their presence. In the past police could get away with brutalizing blacks but not whites. Today white citizens are as likely as racial minorities to be victims of police brutality."

Police brutality is ubiquitous. Black victims are missing the boat by trying to make police brutality a racial issue. We have to acknowledge that police are equal opportunity abusers and everybody is a potential victim before we can end it.

"In America today, every citizen is a potential terrorist in the eyes of the authorities. Airport security makes this clear every minute of every day, as do the FBI and NSA with warrantless spying on our emails, postal mail, telephone calls, and every possible invasion of our privacy. We are all recipients of abuse of our constitutional rights whether or not we suffer beatings, Taserings, and false arrests."

Ubiquitous.

WAR:

Criticism of George Bush's claim "I’d rather fight them over there than here." If that was the only choice, it would make sense, but it's a false choice.

"The U.S. government made the Iraqis and the Taliban the "them" and made Iraq and all of Afghanistan the "there." The terrorism in those countries rose sharply. On one reading, the U.S. government is so dumb that it cannot even identify terrorists and their precise location, even with huge amounts allocated to the CIA. On another reading, the government has made these wars for geopolitical reasons that have little to do with terrorism. On a third reading, the government has been led into these wars by various interest groups. These three readings are not mutually exclusive. All three may apply."

That's a good point. I'm sure all these factor play a role.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Syrian government kills mourners at mass funeral.

POLITICS:

Schwarzenegger to run for EU president? Will the travesties of our society never end?

LOCAL:

Another way government creates crime: thefts from library up because of the recession.

I am so sick of headlines like this:

"Investors who count on DPL Inc. stock for retirement income say they are getting a bum deal under terms of the company’s planned $4.7 billion merger with global energy company AES Corp."

If you aren't willing to accept the consequences of your investment, don't invest. Quit your whining. If you don't realize investments come with risks, you're an idiot.

"Several shareholders told the Dayton Daily News they’re concerned they’ll suffer a significant federal capital gains tax hit in the sale and not be able to maintain the revenue stream they’ve enjoyed with DPL."

OK, what kind of fool do you have to be to present this profit-making experience as a negative? Don't you feel sorry for these people who are making so much profit they might have to pay income tax? How stupid does the Dayton Daily News and these shareholders think we are?

"Within hours of Wednesday’s merger announcement, plaintiffs’ attorneys began lining up, soliciting DPL investors to explore proposed class action lawsuits to protect shareholder interests."

Naturally plaintiff's lawyers lined up to sue somebody to protect people from profits. I'll bet you al ot of these fools think this is in their interest. Decades of government domination of our schools has made Americans the stupidest people on earth. Except for the plaintiff's lawyers.

"“When they talk about retention plans, they’re talking about more compensation. It’s basically a bonus to stay,” said University of Dayton law Professor Harry Gerla, a former attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission. The DPL retention plan presumably would offer higher compensation than the “golden parachutes” in change-of-control agreements to entice the leadership to stay in place, he said."

Hello. Corporations are run by officers. The officers always take care of themselves first and foremost. Anybody who doesn't realize that self-interest is the fundamental principle in all human action is an idiot.

"“I wonder what that will mean for jobs” in Dayton, Gerla said. “In the long run, if they want to realize these centralization efficiencies, somebody’s going to have to go.”"

Jobs? I wonder what it will mean for costs. Ideally it would mean lower costs which would make everybody in Dayton richer, which would lead to more productivity, more jobs and more wealth for everybody. But of course all utilities are controlled by government so they're grotesquely more expensive, lower quality and inefficient than they would be in a free market, so that's unlikely.

"There will be little, if any, early impact on DP&L customers. The utility’s rates are set through the end of 2012, under a plan previously approved by Ohio regulators. DP&L is to keep its name and Dayton offices for at least two years."

In other words, Ohio government gave DP&L a monopoly so it could charge ridiculously high prices and provide abysmal quality of product than it otherwise would have done in a competitive marketplace. And the Dayton Daily News wants us to think that's a good thing.

"After Wednesday’s announcement, DPL’s share price shot up from $27.59 to end the week at $30.32, more than twice AES’s Friday closing price of $13.01."

Don't you feel bad for those poor stockholders who earned ten percent in a couple of days and stand to earn more? Let's do official math: (30.32 - 27.59) / 27.59 / 2 * 365 = 1806 % annualized gain. This story is absurd!

MISC:

Women prefer men with ring fingers longer than index fingers. That's not the only reason women love me.

I hope Walmart grocery delivery takes off.

Government grant of copyright monopoly drives book price over $23 million.

Interview with Philip K. Dick that could only be with Philip K. Dick.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Austrian investment guidelines.

Pretty chart shows how effective government is at looting the people on behalf of the ruling class.

TAX AND SPEND:

Nice chart compares Obama's original budget, Ryan's budget and Obama's response to Ryan's budget. Ryan's is less huge than Obama's but that's not saying much.  Robert Murphy says the Ryan plan isn't serious.

"Yes, the Ryan proposal is certainly better than the long-term budget plan put out by the Obama White House, but that's like saying Darth Vader is a pretty nice guy compared to the Emperor."

Nice analogy.

"The Ryan plan — even using its own numbers — has the federal government running a fiscal deficit this year, next year, the next year, and so on, until about 2038."

That's what passes for budget cutting in Washington.

"The Ryan plan nonetheless calls for adding $5.1 trillion to the federal debt held by the public over the next ten years — an increase of 45 percent from the assumed starting level in the fiscal year 2012. You don't hear too many fans of Ryan couching it in these terms."

That's also what passes for budget cutting in Washington.

Seventy percent of tea partiers oppose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. So much for supporting fiscal responsibility.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Greenpeace says the internet emits too much CO2. I say it doesn't.

Boortz gets this one exactly right:

"Gas is pricy because of Obama’s policies and the low dollar .. but Obama sees an opportunity for political advantage here.  He will investigate the oil companies and the evil speculators.  Few remember that the last time we pulled this “investigate the oil companies” stunt absolutely no wrongdoing was found."

Government never lets a crisis it created go to waste, and whenever the Fed starts inflating, government blames speculators.

More evidence that the greens significantly outspend the skeptics in the climate wars. I think this analysis grossly underestimates the amount of money spent promoting the global warming fraud. According to this report:

"The US Government has spent more than $79 billion of taxpayers’ money since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, propaganda campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks."

We know this money is funneled to frauds to produce pseudo-science that promotes the government's agenda of seizing control of more of our economy and our lives.

Predictions from the first Earth Day show just how outrageous these global warming frauds are, yet some people still believe them.

POLICE STATE:

Reports of Apple's iPhone tracking just get worse every day.

"This week, security researchers revealed that Apple’s iOS 4 mobile operating system, which runs on the highly popular iPhone and iPad devices, constantly tracks and stores users’ approximate location information without their knowledge or consent. It has now been learned that law enforcement agencies have known about the secret iOS tracking for at least the last year, and have used the data to aid criminal investigations, according to CNet."

This is outrageous. I don't think it will happen, but I hope users drop the iPhone like a steaming pile of crap.

"Apple’s iOS isn’t the only mobile OS that collects user location information. Devices running Google’s market-leading Android OS also “keep a record of the locations and unique IDs of the last 50 mobile masts that it has communicated with, and the last 200 Wi-Fi networks that it has ‘seen,’” according to the Guardian."

There you go. Thanks to monopoly grants from government in the form of patents, we don't have the option of a cool smart phone that doesn't track us. My dumb phone is looking better and better.

WAR:

US now bombing Libya from Predator drones.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Syrian government kills up to 75 protesters.

POLITICS:

Contrasting Ron Paul and Gary Johnson.

LOCAL:

It's funny to see a Democrat argue JobsOhio is unconstitutional on the basis of limiting the power of government. He's not arguing that government should not do economic development. He's arguing that Kasich's fascist program is too powerful compared to the socialist program he supports. More info. Case for constitutionality:

"The changes call for JobsOhio to keep public and private funds separate. This would allow the entity to invest private dollars in a company without any constitutional problems, Widener said. It's also prohibited from making political donations.The Senate amendments were enough to assuage concerns from some Democrats in that chamber. All but two of the 10 Senate Democrats voted to pass the legislation."

I sure don't want to have to read this entire bill and the Ohio constitution. I don't have to. Here are the relevant sections of the Constitution. Here's Kasich's vision in a nutshell:

"Kasich has said JobsOhio is intended, in part, to help put the state in the business of being a venture capitalist. Instead of just offering tax breaks to lure companies to Ohio, JobsOhio could lend funds in return for the state gaining equity in the companies it helps."

First, this is classic fascism. Second, the idea that some bureaucrats in Columbus can do a better job in the role of venture capitalist than actual venture capitalists is absurd. Third, Ohio's economy is suffering from the burden of government, and both JobsOhio and the Department of Development increase that burden.

MISC:

The market provides incredible bounty including perfumes for RPG geeks.

Meetings not only steal productivity from businesses, they reduce creativity too.

"Sherwin explains that while these discussions seem to bring out creativity as ideas are ping-ponged back and forth, these sessions are really social affairs where everyone loses track of time, “at the cost of surfacing everyone’s unique perspectives and voices. We risk filling the time with consensus, rather than exploring divergent, multi-disciplinary viewpoints. It is in the friction between these views that we explore new patterns of thought.”"

Meeting are the bane of businesses and the crutch of managers.

"In their book Rework, Jason Fried and David Hansson write that when operating a business, any interruptions are to be avoided, especially meetings, because they squash productivity."

No kidding.

Thanks to modern technology, Canada is denying entrance to Americans with criminal records.

Free kibbles

GLOBAL WARMING:

Satellites discover 657 new islands. Global warming frauds attribute their creation to sea level rise then warn they are threatened by sea level rise. Apparently the irony is lost on them.

LOCAL:

City government will never acknowledge that its taxes and spending are what's destroying Dayton, so instead its blaming the problems on selling single servings of beer and pressuring businesses downtown to stop selling them. For some of those poor people, that single beer is the highlight of their day, and they can't afford a six pack. What a load of crap. Government always blames the people for the problems it creates.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Five years after the housing bubble peaked, foreclosures are still running at record rates. That's because the government is doing everything it can to keep the market from reaching bottom so it can start growing again.

TAX AND SPEND:

Trying to identify this or that government expenditure as the one that is bankrupting the government is worthless. All government spending makes us poorer. Every dollar government spends it first steals from us, making us poorer. Then every dollar the government spends diverts resources from the productive private sector into the parasitic political economy, making us poorer again. We have to pay for every dollar government spends twice.

POLICE STATE:

Cops escort Charlie Sheen caravan at eighty miles per hour. Cops aid members of the ruling class to break the laws. Imagine if they spotted you doing 80 down city streets.

Janet Napolitano supports the TSA molestation of a six year old under the pretense of making us safer. This is an abomination.

Michigan police performing forensic data analysis of cell phones at traffic stops. You got to be kidding me.

WAR:

It looks like the ruling class has figured out the pretense it's going to use to put western troops in Libya: evacuating civilians.

This warning of a potential military coup if the government tried to bring all the troops overseas home sounds extremely paranoid. It makes no sense that troops would affect a coup so because they didn't want to be back in America.

POLITICS:

Comparison of how similar Obama is to Bush. Like Bush on steroids. It's nice to see somebody in the main stream figure that out. More people are figuring out that it doesn't matter who's in the White House, and that's why Obama is losing support from every demographic in America.

Obama's plan to accelerate the collapse of our economy in order to spark a Marxist revolution.

Somebody is releasing a birther book, and it's number two on Amazon. This birther thing is a huge story, and it's only going to get bigger. If Obama has a birth certificate, whatever it says must be horrific for him to not release it. Then again, we already know the governor of Hawaii, an Obama supporter, has reported Obama's birth certificate does not exist in Hawaii's archives. On December 28 I wrote:

"It's interesting that the incoming governor of Hawaii is a Democrat, Obama ally and knew him as a child and wants to release Obama's full birth certificate. This pits Obama against his core constituency. This lends more credence to my theory that the longer Obama refuses, the more damaging the information must be. If Abercrombie backtracks on this, and that's almost certain to happen, it will do more damage to Obama."

The AP article that link pointed to has been removed. More media cover-up for Obama. Here's basically the same article from the LA Times.

MEDIA:

CBS refuses to release the full audio from Obama's hot mike comments. This is similar to the LA Times decision during the campaign not to release recording of Obama at a party with Bill Ayers. The press covers up for their man.

MISC:

Government once again tries to fix a problem it created.

Jeffrey Tucker identifies three more government attacks on civilization. They won't be happy until we're living in the stone age again, and they really won't be happy then.

The libertarians' darling company Apple busted for creepy tracking feature on the iPhone. I think some libertarians wish corporations were like Randian heroes. None are. They're all in bed with government.

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

I like this skepticism over Standard & Poors warning about US government debt. If they're not downgrading it, what's the point? It might just be to fool the people into thinking something real is being done about the debt.

Paul Ryan's budget plan claims to cut $4 trillion from budget growth over ten years. In order to make his plan sound comparable, Obama is claiming it cuts $4 trillion too, but his is over twelve years. This is designed to confuse people.

Here's another reason why government pseudo-services are so expensive: the overhead of tax compliance.

"There is a lot more to taxes than simply paying the bill. Taxpayers must spend significantly more than $1 in order to provide $1 of income-tax revenue to the federal government.


To start with, individuals and businesses must pay the government the $1 in revenue plus the costs of their own time spent filing and complying with the tax code; plus the tax collection costs of the IRS; plus the tax compliance outlays that individuals and businesses pay to help them file their taxes.

In a study published last week by the Laffer Center, my colleagues Wayne Winegarden, John Childs and I estimate that these costs alone are a staggering $431 billion annually. This is a cost markup of 30 cents on every dollar paid in taxes. And this is not even a complete accounting of the costs of tax complexity."

It gets worse:

"David Keating of the National Taxpayers Union provides a useful perspective on how big the tax compliance industry is. According to his research, as of 2009 the income-tax industry employed "more workers than are employed at the five biggest employers among Fortune 500 companies—more than all the workers at Wal-Mart Stores, United Parcel Service, McDonald's, International Business Machines, and Citigroup combined." Without diminishing in any way the professionalism of tax attorneys, accountants and financial planners, all of these efforts produce nothing other than, well, tax compliance. "

That's a phenomenal waste of money.

Boortz reports: "There are now 72,536 pages of federal tax code rules, regulations, and IRS rulings." and "A hundred years ago, federal spending for each person was the equivalent of $200 in today’s dollars … This year, it’s over $12,000."

The Finns oust their ruling party in anger of the bailout of Portugal in another step in the sovereign debt collapse of Europe.

"The Portugal case and the Finnish reaction should serve as a wake-up call. All these bailouts and stimulus packages cannot hide the fact that the governments and banking systems of the United States and Europe are fundamentally bankrupt, sustained only by the power to create money out of thin air. Each intervention is working to buy time but not to deal with the fundamental problem. And each time, when the problems return, they are worse than before."

The same thing is happening here.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

More evidence that government creates poverty, death and disease.

"Research by the World Bank indicates that the increase in biofuels production over 2004 levels would push more than 35 million additional people into absolute poverty in 2010 in developing countries. Using statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Indur Goklany estimates that this would lead to at least 192,000 excess deaths per year, plus disease resulting in the loss of 6.7 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) per year. "

Every government policy is an act of aggression against the people and does the same.

Charles Manson joins the global warming frauds.

POLITICS:

Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter says what all politicians think: he would love a dictatorship. But he'll get blasted for being honest.

Free kibbles

POLICE STATE:

Here's an example of how government has created arbitrary laws so it can enforce them as it wishes.

"In his book, The Language of Dissent, former Federal Trade Commissioner, Lowell Mason, went to great lengths to point out how, under the various antitrust laws, if a firm charges a higher price than its competitors it is a “monopoly per se” (i.e., in a competitive market, one could not get away with this practice); if a firm charges a lower price than its competitors, it is engaged in “predatory pricing” (i.e., the only reason for pricing beneath the level of your competition was to drive them out of business); and if a firm charges the same price as its competitors, it is engaged in “price-fixing.” "

This way government can arbitrarily target any business or individual it doesn't like at any time. That's oppression, not the rule of law.

Free kibbles

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Here's another step in Bernanke's destruction of the dollar: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will no longer use the dollar in exchanges between each other. The demand for dollars just dropped, which means the value of the dollar just dropped.

Assuming Republicans control Congress, would Obama or a Republican do less damage after winning the White House in 2012?

Before the 2008 election, I claimed that Obama would do less damage than McCain unless Democrats won a filibuster-proof Senate. Unfortunately, Democrats won a filibuster-proof Senate, and they did tremendous damage. Now I'm considering a similar question:

Assuming Republicans control Congress, would Obama or a Republican do less damage after winning the White House in 2012?

Republicans are pretty good at resisting Democrat programs, but Democrats tend to go along with Republican expansion of government. We've seen that Boehner and Ryan have no interest in cutting spending. What do you think?

Criminal Gangs War Over Buses

Criminal Gangs War Over Buses
by Mark Luedtke

If you read the Dayton Daily News over the last couple of weeks, you might have thought the most important story in the world was whether or not Beavercreek city council would allow the RTA to run buses to Fairfield Commons. Oddly, the story was almost non-existent in the Greene County papers. Apparently this is a big deal to Dayton’s powers-that-be, so the Dayton Daily News tried to gin up support for the bus routes.

I find the entire affair enlightening. If you just look at the surface of the issue like the Dayton Daily News did, it’s obvious that discrimination against blacks played a major role in the council’s refusal.  One editorial noted:
“The council’s demands of RTA would be comical if the situation weren’t so sad.
Among them:
— Provide ‘state of the art’ surveillance cameras that ‘transmit real-time surveillance pictures to the Beavercreek Police Department.’
— ‘Provide heated and air-conditioned shelters.’
— Limit use of the stops to small ‘airport shuttle-type’ buses.”
The council knew these demands were absurd and could never be met. That was never their intention. These demands were designed to scare Beavercreek residents into believing RTA’s poor, mostly black riders were criminals, and the council wanted to protect them. It worked. By pretending to protect Beavercreek citizens, council members gained support from the people they manipulated. Like all government actions, this was a charade by council members to increase their power at the expense of the people.

But there are deeper issues here that haven’t been addressed. First, why is Beavercreek city council involved? Why doesn’t RTA drop riders off at the mall? Did the mall owners refuse to allow that? If so, that should have been the end of it. This matter should be decided by property owners, not government. Second, since RTA is also funded by taxes, why do we allow government to loot us to enrich the ruling class under the guise of helping the poor travel?

This conflict highlights the true nature of government. If thugs demanded money from you at the point of a gun so they could run a bus service, you would instantly know a criminal gang was robbing you. Nobody would claim that funding a bus service with stolen money was a legitimate service or good for the community. Everybody would know the goal was to enrich the thugs. If thugs forced you to pay them a fee for protection, you would instinctively know you were a victim of a protection racket. Nobody would claim being a victim of a protection racket made you safer. Everybody would know the goal was to enrich the thugs. But if the criminal gang occasionally gives us the privilege of choosing between Tony Soprano and Don Corleone to run it, we call it a government, call its armed robbery taxes, and think it works for us. Sycophants left and right claim the bus service and protection racket funded with stolen money benefit society.

But there are differences between ordinary criminals and the criminals who run government. Government is run by arch-criminals who are so successful they’ve seized control of the law-making process so they can make their crimes legal. They hate competition, so they hunt down less successful criminal gangs. Also, they must provide pseudo-services to give their looting programs the illusion of legitimacy to keep the people from rebelling. These services invariably cost more and are lower quality than equivalent services provided by the private sector.

Most people believe government exists to provide services that benefit the people, so they think government provides poor services because of inefficiency. That belief is mistaken. Like all criminal gangs, government exists to loot the people on behalf of the gang leaders and members - the ruling class, bureaucrats and agents - and it’s ruthlessly effective by design.

This conflict highlights how socialist America has become. The conflict was created by government and can only exist because of government. In a free society, the private owners of the mall and bus line would negotiate a mutually beneficial deal. Both would supply inexpensive, effective security to deal with the rare criminal. Both would profit. Store owners and workers would profit. Bus customers would profit. Everybody would profit. There’d be no council meetings. No protesters. No headlines. No ruling class looters. Just people improving their lives and the lives of everybody around them through a system of voluntary exchange.

Government doesn’t help the poor. By looting us, it destroys wealth, makes us all poorer and traps people in poverty. Government doesn’t protect us from criminals. Government initiates most violence in society, creates most conflicts in society, attacks people with arbitrary laws of aggression, creates black markets, steals from people, traps them in poverty, and divides them into winners and losers. It commits most crimes, legalized and not, and promotes criminal activity. The ruling class, bureaucrats and government agents profit from poverty and crime. That’s why regardless of whom we elect, government creates more of both, not less. Government is the enemy of civilized society and human advancement. And as this conflict illustrates, government promotes and institutionalizes racial discrimination for the benefit of our rulers.