Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

SEIU manual on intimidation.

TAX AND SPEND:

CATO explains that these paltry spending cut plans being debated aren't nearly big enough.

Obama is suddenly open to a short-term increase even though he claimed he wasn't before.

This is what we get from earmarks: navy ships nobody wanted headed to the scrap heap without ever setting sail. All government spending destroys wealth. All government spending is a a bridge to nowhere.

HEALTH CARE:

Romneycare has significantly increased health care costs in Massachusetts, and Obamacare is doing the same.

Claim that coconut oil combats Alzheimers. I wouldn't be at all surprised that Alzheimers is a result of carb abuse.

GLOBAL WARMING AND MEDIA:

Nice movie shows the spread of the central US heat wave. I haven't seen anybody blame this weather event on global warming yet.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Drug prohibition has created dangerous needle parks.

POLICE STATE:

TSA software to replace a person's image with a generic image on the nude scanner screens, but they're still bathing travelers in dangerous radiation.

Jury acquits men prosecuted for filming police.

WAR:

General criticizes government IT, saying it's in the stone age. This is the same government that wants to seize control of security on the internet.

Documentation of civilian casualties from US drone attacks in Pakistan.

""Most of the people are killed by American drones," he said. "But reports on these incidents also say that a certain number of militants have been killed."Almost all of Behram's photos come from locations in northern or southern Waziristan. They've been hit by rockets fired from drones manned from across the world -- from control rooms in the US. "I can't say how many extremists have been killed in reality," he says. "All I can say is that most of the victims are not militants, but those who aren't involved. Mostly women and children.""

"Washington officials say there are almost no civilian victims any longer because the drone attacks are so precise. But Behram disagrees. "I estimate that for every dead extremist there are some 15 civilian victims," he said."

Which goes unreported.

POLITICS:

Ron Paul received more donations from the military than all the other Republicans combined and more than Obama. I thought I read the target for this last money bomb was $2 million, not $500,000. I can't find an email to verify that, so maybe I'm wrong.

Tom Woods starts a PAC to support Ron Paul.

You know how the media keeps telling us that Obama and Democrats are winning the debate on the debt ceiling? If that's true, then how come Obama's poll numbers against a generic Republican keep falling?

Rick Perry brings in Don Rumsfeld. It must be a Texas tradition.

MEDIA:

Msnbc praises Senate Republicans for their flexibility - in other words, they're willingness to act like Democrats - in the budget debate.

LOCAL:

Dayton police fires one officer and demotes another in disciplinary action. That's unusual.

MISC:

Federal workers are more likely to die than get fired. That's not the only reason why government is inefficient. Even if government workers were the most honest, hardworking, capable people in the country, they still would be blinded because they don't have prices and profits to guide them.

Contrary to what copyright lovers want us to believe, pirates are great customers who buy more of the products than download than the typical consumer.

This IP stuff is getting stupider by the day. Kim Kardashian is suing Old Navy for using a look-a-like. I wonder what damages she'll claim.

"'Kim Kardashian is immediately recognisable, and is known for her look and style. Her identity and persona are valuable. When her intellectual property rights are violated, she intends to enforce them,' her lawyer added."

Her look and style are IP. The silver lining in attacks like this is people are beginning to see IP is a monopoly granted by government to protect the rich and powerful.

What will happen to the debt ceiling?

Apparently there are three plans in Congress to raise the debt ceiling, but supposedly none of them can pass both chambers and be signed by the President. As the supposed drop dead date approaches, that could change and new plans could arise. So...

What will happen to the debt ceiling?

Dog Oppression

Dog Oppression
by Mark Luedtke

A quick Google search of the top issues facing America turns up the economy, jobs, debt, etc., but nothing about dogs. But Americans are passionate about their best friends, so action by local city councils in Toledo and Cleveland initiated a snowball effect across Ohio. Both councils removed pit bulls from their automatic definition of dangerous dogs. Other Ohio cities including Kettering and Oakwood are considering the same. Since pit bulls have gone mainstream, representatives in the Ohio House spotted an opportunity to gain some votes, so they followed along. This bill has yet to pass the Senate so it’s not yet state law.

Cleveland Councilman Matt Zone, who owns a pit bull, described the absurdity of labeling all pit bulls as dangerous, “It just seemed fundamentally wrong to say that a certain breed is bad. That’s like me saying that all people that come from northwest Ohio aren’t good people.” The same could be said for every law that institutionalizes group identities. Under the new city laws, dogs will be labeled dangerous based on their individual actions - if they attack a person or another dog - not their group identity. If only legislators were so enlightened regarding people, but pandering to group identity is a proven way to buy votes, so that will continue.

But the bigger question is why government dictates how we deal with dogs at all. Propagandists claim these laws make us safer, but they don’t. The best way to make sure dogs don’t attack other people is to hold owners solely responsible for their actions so courts will levy full liability against the owner for any unwarranted attack. These laws interfere with that personal responsibility and therefore the levying of liability, which makes it more likely an owner will allow his dog to attack somebody.

One way to determine the real motive behind laws is to follow the money. Every law steals money from some people and funnels it to special interests who then send a portion back to the politicians along with their votes. The reason laws have become thousands of pages long is legislatures are paying off so many special interests with each law. Ohio’s 1987 dog law paid off insurance companies. Owners of dangerous dogs were an easy target, relatively few, not popular and not politically connected, so government required them to carry $100,000 of liability insurance. No doubt the insurance companies wrote that provision of the law themselves and have enjoyed those profits extracted from citizens by government coercion.

Another way to determine the real motive behind a law is to see whom it targets. One of the reasons people buy dogs, and pit bulls in particular, is for self-defense. The requirement of $100,000 insurance policy made it impossible for poor people, those who are most in need of a dog which can protect them from predators, from being able to afford one. The laws also define how dangerous dogs must be chained and caged keeping them from being able to protect their owners and adding additional expense.

All gun control laws follow the pattern of the rich and powerful disarming the poor and minorities, making them easier victims for predators and less likely to rise up against their oppressors. Bans on Saturday night specials and AK-47s, inexpensive guns that poor people can use for self defense, are a good example. This dangerous dog law is similar.

The $100,000 insurance policy and the restraining requirements on dogs will remain in effect. So in the best case scenario, if a predator breaks into the house of a poor person, and that person’s dog bites the intruder, the poor person will likely lose the dog. In the worst case, the dog will be unable to protect its owner because it’s tied or caged, and the owner will become a victim. Instead of making us safer as propagandists claim, government creates perverse incentives that benefit criminals, making our lives more dangerous.

If government really cared about making us safer, it would get out of our lives. In this case poor people would be better able to defend against predators, dog owners would do a better job of keeping aggressive dogs in check, and those few dog owners who failed to keep an aggressive dog in check would pay appropriate compensation.

Who do you trust more to be honest, helpful, and brave, politicians or dogs? Which would you want by your side in a crisis? Most dogs exhibit the qualities we most admire in people. On the other hand we all know the old joke, “How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving.” It’s funny because it’s true. Politicians are masters of lying, cheating, stealing and violence. That we allow politicians to dictate how we handle our dogs is a travesty. We’d be better off to use our dogs to handle the politicians.

Removing pit bulls as a group from the list of dangerous dogs is a small, mostly symbolic step in the right direction, but the government is still looting and oppressing us with its dangerous dog laws.

Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF RELIGION:

Herman Cain doesn't support it, nor property rights, but claims he does.

SOCIALISM:

Government-owned electric car company goes bankrupt. Imagine that.

TAX AND SPEND:

Judge Napolitano writes an open letter to John Boehner urging him to keep the debt limit where it is. He won't. He doesn't want to. He wants to steal more money from us so he can enrich himself and his cronies. Republicans should make adopt a slogan like "Not One Penny More".

This balanced budget amendment stuff is a red herring. If it was to pass, Congress would ignore it just like it ignores the rest of the Constitution. It's just another political gimmick. Boortz falls for the charade.

"Republicans have come up with a plan for our debt ceiling.  They are calling it “cut, cap and balance.”  The plan would cut spending in 2012 by $111 billion, cap future spending at 19.9% of GDP (Obama has raised it to about 25% of GDP), and approve a Balanced Budget Amendment."

This Congress can no more limit spending of future Congresses than past Congresses limit the spending of this Congress. As long as there are votes to buy, Congress will steal our money and use it to buy them. Ron Paul blasts the cut, cap and balance plan. It's funny that that plan is considered the most aggressive.

The House passes cut, cap and balance. Some are criticizing this as a political stunt because it has no chance of passing the Senate or even if it did, being signed into law. But that position is biased. You could just as easily criticize the senate and president for not entertaining it. The built in assumption is the Republicans must cave to the Democrats, and that's a crock. I criticize the plan for other reasons like it's worthless.

Here's a bunch of partisan bullcrap: if the debt limit is raised, blame Republicans because they control one chamber of Congress. Don't blame Democrats even though they control the other chamber and the White House. Of course if Congress raises the debt ceiling, Republicans share blame, but singling them out for blame is just part of the divide and conquer strategy both parties use against us.

Seven myths about the consequences of failing to raise the debt limit.

EPA sponsoring golf lessons for its employees paid for with our tax dollars.

EDUCATION:

The Austrian guys talk a lot about savings, but I've never seen anyone address the role of savings in education. Imagine if you built a spear, used it once, then threw it away. You wouldn't get very good with a spear. Other people might not ever see a spear, see you use it and be able to copy it. Saving the spear gives you the opportunity to practice with it, for you to teach others how to build or use it and for others to copy the spear. I think savings is more important than even Austrians think.

HEALTH CARE:

Very thorough article on diet, the benefits of natural fat, the problems caused by carbs, and on how the modern American diet pushed by the government and its corporate agents is making us unhealthy.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Study quantifies green house gas production from dairy farms. Regulation and price increases will follow.

I've long thought that painting roofs white in the south would save money.

POLICE STATE:

Accusation of prosecutorial misconduct in the Casey Anthony trial. This is standard operating procedure.

How many times have we all seen a situation where people do the right thing in spite of the law only to have a cop single somebody out and create huge problems.

A couple of days ago I said Anonymous had committed a big mistake that would bring the government down on their heads. Today the FBI arrested 16 Anonymous suspects in a nationwide sweep.

Man arrested for videoing police crime in 2006, and subsequently vindicated, is arrested for doing it a second time.

Not satisfied with arming Mexican drug cartels, ATF had another program called operation castaway that supplied weapons to criminals in other countries. Keep this in mind when somebody claims that government protects us.

WAR:

Analysis shows that our wars do not make us safer. On the contrary, they make us less safe. You can't blame this on the troops though.

"If the American people had dismantled the nation’s standing army when the Soviet empire was dismantled, the federal government would have lacked the military means to meddle and intervene in the Middle East with unconstitutional military operations, sanctions, no-fly zones, bases, invasions, and occupations. Therefore, there never would have been the terrorists attacks against the United States and a “war on terrorism” for the troops to fight, not to mention the USA PATRIOT Act, secret search warrants and secret courts, the Padilla doctrine, and other federal infringements on our rights and freedoms."

Soldier realizes that he,

"was a hitman for the banksters."

I would say the ruling class, not just banksters. More of the ruling class profits from war than them.

Exposing the secret and illegal war in Somalia.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Israeli navy hijacks another ship to keep it from reaching Gaza.

POLITICS:

Report claims Michelle Bachmann regularly, like weekly, has stress-induced headaches that debilitate her and sometimes land her in the hospital and for which she takes a significant amount of medicine. Yikes. Bachmann confirms migraines and prescriptions, but denies they're debilitating. If they aren't debilitating, they aren't migraines.

US officials arrest Pakistani agent for illegally lobbying. I imagine every country in the world illegally lobbies here, and the US only targets them for political reasons because the politicians want the money. This is probably part of the ongoing campaign to demonize Pakistan.

LOCAL:

You want to know what happens when government takes monopoly control over the production of electricity? Higher prices and shortages.

"In order to combat rising utility fees, the city of Hamilton is requesting residents decrease electric usage during peak hours today through Friday.According to the city, the next four days will likely be some of the hottest of the year, with temperatures in the 90s.
City Manager Joshua Smith hopes residents will consider conserving energy from 3 to 7 p.m. those days by shutting off lights not needed, unplugging small appliances, raising thermostats a couple degrees, closing curtains, and doing laundry at other times.
“Conserving energy helps to lower the customer’s monthly electric bill,” said Charles Young, deputy city manager of utilities. “By conserving energy during the periods stated for the upcoming days, the citizens of Hamilton have the opportunity of making a difference in their system, through electric cost containment and environmental stewardship.”"

According to government, the shortages are caused by consumers and the weather, not the government which produces the electricity. What else would you expect?

Teacher who bought beer for students and had sex with them will claim insanity. But as usual...

"Schuler’s attorneys, Charlie H. Rittgers and Charlie M. Rittgers told Peeler they didn’t want to jump the gun on entering a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity plea, until they were sure they had good cause. The Rittgers father and son team said the prosecution’s non-compliance with some discovery requests has slowed the evaluation process."

This is SOP.

It's unusually hot, but this story would have you believe that people don't know how to deal with heat. It's like every time it snows now it's an emergency. When I was a kid, we didn't blink at a few inches of snow. It it wasn't over six, it was nothing. People in Texas deal with much more heat for over half a year. People in Canada deal with much more snow for over half a year. Quit acting like these events are some sort of crisis.

MISC:

Earth's population to hit seven billion this year. I have very little confidence in the UN's numbers.

This concern that long term research may suffer because of austerity programs if based on the fallacy that only government can or will fund long term research. In a free market, individuals and businesses would fund it, and as a result, we'd get better research for less money.

Critical flaw in Keynes's theory.

Potential for a left-right alliance against the common enemy: the ruling class.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Even Obama's partners at Goldman-Sachs are downgrading their forecast for the economy, but not as much as they should.

TAX AND SPEND:

Here we go again. If you oppose Obama's plan to raise taxes and debt, you're a racist. They've played this card so many times now, especially after Americans elected the first black president, I don't think it has any effect any more.

Obama claims polls show Americans don't like the Republican plan. Supposedly Americans want tax hikes. Baloney.

I love when Mark Steyn hits the ball out of the park.

"There is something surreal and unnerving about the so-called "debt ceiling" negotiations staggering on in Washington. In the real world, negotiations on an increase in one's debt limit are conducted between the borrower and the lender. Only in Washington is a debt increase negotiated between two groups of borrowers."

We're the stupidest people in the world. We've elected these same freaks for decades to rob us blind, and now that people are starting to realize they've robbed us blind, they elect the same freaks to fix the problem. My guy isn't the problem. The other 534 of them are crooks, but not my guy. Baloney. They're all crooks.

"Nothing good is going to come from these ludicrously protracted negotiations over laughably meaningless accounting sleights-of-hand scheduled to kick in circa 2020. All the charade does is confirm to prudent analysts around the world that the depraved ruling class of the United States cannot self-correct, and, indeed, has no desire to."

Well said.

"But already the world is imposing its own debt ceiling. Most of the debt issued by the Treasury so far this year has been borrowed from the Federal Reserve. That adds another absurd wrinkle to the D.C. charade: Washington is negotiating with itself over how much money to lend itself."

It's a farce.

Every government spending project destroys wealth. They're all bridge to nowheres.

Over half of UK millionaires are investigating leaving the UK to escape confiscatory taxes. This is what Barack Obama would like to happen here. He thinks that would collapse the US economy and enable him to lead a communist revolution. He's wrong.

Pat Buchanan on the welfare state disaster: "We're all Greeks Now". To our detriment.

"We are either going to man up and radically reduce government at all levels in the United States, or the bond markets are going to do it for us, as they are doing it today for Greece, Ireland and Portugal."

In other words, either we're going to intelligently reduce the size and scope of government in a manner that minimizes pain, or economic reality is going to do it for us without any regard for minimizing pain. Take a look at the debt ceiling farce and guess which will happen.

HEALTH CARE:

FDA attacks company for selling walnuts. Notice it wasn't a big corporate donor.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Despite the media hype at launch, Al Gore's new project is getting few visitors. I expected as much.

The reason Gore tried to light a new fire and the reason I expected it would fail is the planet hasn't warmed in 15 years. People recognize that. But I have no doubt Gore timed this to coincide with the end of la Nina, which cools the planet.

WAR ON DRUGS:

After all this time and despite congressional hearings, the head of the ATF claims that top dogs in the (DOJ?) are hiding an internal report that exposes their complicity in the fast and furious crimes. What a dufus. If he's being honest, he should bring out the report himself.

POLICE STATE:

Facial recognition programs are misidentifying people. Now you are guilty of crimes you didn't commit until you can prove you're not the person a computer thought you were. Powerful tools can be used for good or evil, and computers are powerful tools.

Police get iPhone attachment to do facial recognition and retina scans of anybody they chose.

WAR:

Marine General John Allen relieves General Petraeus in Afghanistan so he can head the CIA. Something tells me he won't have to retire from the military to take that job, but he should.

POLITICS:

Murdoch and the Clinton impeachment as signs of the collapsing empire.

MEDIA:

Ruling class stooges, even those who have been exposed as freaks, as they all are, like Eliot Spitzer, claim libertarianism led to our economic problems.

"Spitzer's commentary is simply not in touch with reality. On the first page of the introduction, Spitzer writes that we have forgotten what we had learned from the crisis. What did we forget?
Say what? Thirty years of libertarianism? A period when the United States central bank, the Federal Reserve, boosted the money supply from $1.6 trillion to $7.7 trillion. A period during which it became near impossible to start a brokerage firm to compete against the banksters, without spending literally millions to pass through all the regulatory hurdles. A period during which government attempts to regulate every nook and cranny of our lives exploded. This Spitzer tells us was a period of libertarianism."

...in the immediate aftermath of the bankruptcy of the entire financial system, there was a consensus that the libertarianism that had dominated Washington for 30 years was an abject failure. (p.4)

Neither truth nor facts matter to the ruling class. Only power matters, and they will say and do whatever it takes to remain in power.

Phone hacking whistle-blower found dead for no apparent reason. That's suspicious. But not for police. That's doubly suspicious. Can you say CIA?

LOCAL:

Hottest week in a decade. Man, that sucks. It's smoking hot right now.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

North Koreans starving.

TAX AND SPEND:

Congress should lower the debt ceiling, but it won't.

So this cut, cap and balance plan has no chance of becoming law right now. But it might if the other plans don't become law. Not that I'm impressed with this plan, but the tea partiers should stand by their convictions, and if establishment Republicans joins Obama and Democrats in a presidential power grab, the tea partiers can replace them in the 2012 primaries.

Government intervention is producing violence over dinner tabs in Greece. It's going to be the same here.

The great welfare state experiment is collapsing in front of our eyes and taking us with it.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Peter Schiff blasts Bernanke on many points.

Forbes covers Bernanke's stupid comments regarding gold. Bernanke showed himself to be a fool to the mainstream financial people. Bernanke admits he's clueless about the economy.

"Despite an economy that remains in a soft patch, with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admitting he’s “clueless” as to what are the underlying reasons causing sluggish growth, the Fed discussed “exit strategy principles” for the first time during its last FOMC meetings.  Ironically, the same meeting saw some people considering the possibility of QE3."

You can't make this stuff up.

EDUCATION:

Law school building boom.

"Segal explains that law school tuition has increased at 4 times that of undergraduate education, which itself has increased 4 times the CPI."

Thanks to all the money stolen by government and injected into college.

HEALTH CARE:

Study shows that salt stimulates the same effect in the brain as drugs. The difference is natural salt is necessary for life, and once you get enough of it, you don't crave it any more. But you can bet the FDA will seize in this to cut our salt and make us more unhealthy.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Now it turns out that six of the fast and furious Mexican drug cartel drug smugglers were actually FBI stooges.

Philadelphia government saves $2 million by decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana. That doesn't count the economic gains by not prosecuting these people. Think how much they would save if the decriminalized all drugs.

POLICE STATE:

The war on lemonade stands continues.

Woman arrested for touching the breast of a female TSA agent, but TSA agents grope people with impunity. Government is a predatory organization that has monopolized the lawmaking process in order to legalize the crimes of its agents. I hope this woman makes this case.

Police officer tasers man in handcuffs. He isn't charged nor does he lose his job.

POLITICS:

Rick Perry feels call to run for president. I guess the he means the call from the Bilderberg Society.

MISC:

All our water problems are created by government.

Facebook bans Google+ ads because it can't stand the competition.

"Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions."

How funny.

New technique, done against doctor's advice, allows man to regrow fingertip.

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

All this talk about a balanced budget amendment is a red herring. The crooks don't obey the law or the Constitution. They'll have this same argument over and over and never balance the budget unless there are real penalties, like the leaders of both parties in both houses losing their jobs.

Remember in 2008 when Obama rammed whatever he wanted through Congress because he won the election? Remember in 2010 when voters wiped out Democrats for their big spending, big taxing way? Obama doesn't feel the same about that election so he keeps pushing for tax hikes.

A short history of US government defaults.

The government basically owns the big three credit rating agencies, so I'm not surprised that S&P has effectively come out in support of the Obama-Boehner not so grand bargain.

"Key elements for a big deal remain in place. Obama has been clear that he wants one and has started making the case to skeptical factions of his own party that getting the nation’s fiscal house in order is in their best interest. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) also remains committed to an ambitious plan, having told his troops that he didn’t become speaker to do small things. And, perhaps most critically, the markets are demanding it. The credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s says Washington must agree to reduce the debt by $4 trillion over 10 years to avert a downgrade."

Since S&P is basically a branch of the government, it does what the most powerful men in Washington want. It cracks me up how the press keeps calling this a grand bargain. The government is going to create from 10-15 trillion in debt, maybe more, over the next ten years, but everybody acts like some bargain that will nominally cut that by four trillion, but which will never actually happen, is a grand bargain.

REGULATION:

If clothes designers get copyright, it will cripple the fashion industry they way IP is crippling others.

GLOBAL WARMING:

The idea that scientists are trying to manufacture consensus on man-made global warming makes any consensus meaningless.

POLICE STATE:

This statement from the Casey Anthony prosecutor sums up his case and why he lost.

"I have never been able to figure out a reason why somebody would cover up an accident by putting pieces of duct tape over the nose and mouth of a child and then dumping them in a swamp. When children die by accident, people call for help. That's how it works in the real world. In the fictional world that may be different. But in the real world, people want their child to live and Casey clearly didn't. Every action she took showed that."

None of that is evidence of murder, and it shouldn't have been allowed in the trial. The onus is not on the defense to explain why somebody might put duck tape on a child who died by accident. The onus is on the prosecution to show that the defendant committed murder. Failing to report her child missing is not evidence of murder. It's evidence she's a rotten mother. She certainly seemed happy her daughter was dead. That's reason to suspect her. But it's not evidence of murder. Experts noted that the judge really facilitated the prosecution:

""The judge really opened the doors for everything in this case. Maybe he thought, 'Let the appeals court deal with it.' Maybe he was punting. But in my opinion, none of it should have gotten into the trial" said defense lawyer and forensic consultant Keith Murray."

No kidding. The same with the video:

""It was a graphic animation portraying [a theory of] how the child was killed but it wasn't evidence. It only graphically showed what the prosecution would like the jury to believe happened. It's not evidence, it shouldn't have been admitted as evidence. It's inflammatory and not based on any scientific foundation," said Lawrence Kobilinsky, chairman of the Department of Sciences at John Jay College School of Criminal Justice in New York."

No kidding.

WAR:

The body guard who killed Karzai's brother was a CIA asset then a Taliban double agent.

Qaddafi supporter rally for third day in a row.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Chavez delegates powers so he can rule while undergoing chemotherapy in Cuba.

It strikes me that our government has a foreign policy of aggression and a domestic policy of aggression. That makes perfect sense because if you elect people to be aggressive in foreign policy, they'll have an aggressive nature, and they'll push aggressive domestic policy. And vice-versa.

POLITICS:

Breakdown of Republican candidates' finances. Obama's bundlers bring in big bucks. I wonder how much of it is illegal. We'll never know.

MISC:

Verizon requires customer to get a subpoena to get an itemized bill.

I'm really looking forward to trying Google Plus too. This is a great observation about capitalism.

"It turns out that capitalism doesn't operate at all the way people once thought it did. It is not a system that permits the captains of industry to extract money from workers and peasants so that the fat cats can accumulate and keep it for themselves. Not at all; if anything it is the reverse. The captains of industry are desperately clamoring for us to pay attention to them and we agree to do so provided they find ever more creative ways of making us happy at their expense."

The only problem with capitalism is the crony part.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

What happens when government uses its power of coercion to set prices artificially low? Shortages and stampedes.

EDUCATION:

School choice works in Sweden in a good reminder that the US is more socialist than Sweden. But the government should not pay.

POLICE STATE:

Thanks to the lynch mob fervor ignited by the prosecution and press against Casey Anthony, a woman in Oklahoma wrecked into and flipped the car of another woman who looked like Casey Anthony.

I've long predicted that TSA would set up a program for the ruling class and others willing to pay to avoid being zapped and groped at airports. Now they have. This is a divide and conquer tactic. Big media people will avoid the persecution so they will stop covering it.

POLITICS:

Obama raised $86 million last quarter. That just shows you how much people are willing to pay to access government's looting powers. Everybody who gave money to Obama received a heck of a lot more from government since he's been in office.

Remember when I said that the supposed law to cut off funds to ACORN was a sham? It was.

MEDIA:

Why do I care if somebody in the White House called Bret Baier a lunatic? Obama doesn't have to like Foxnews. Foxnews doesn't have to like Obama. The White House doesn't even have to give Foxnews access. The problem was that the White House was using the government's power of coercion against Foxnews.

Doing his best to scare the American people, avowed Marxist Chris Matthews claims that failure to raise the debt ceiling would be the worst thing we've ever seen happen in America. Go tell it to the people who died in WWII.

MISC:

SpaceX has plan to deliver with one launch more payload than has been delivered to Mars by all the governments in history, and undoubtedly at much lower cost.

"So as far as I'm concerned, it's not the death of anything. What we're really facing is quite the opposite. I think we're at the dawn of a new era of spaceflight, one which is going to advance much faster than it ever has in the past.The space shuttle was designed in the '70s, and it really didn't improve after almost 40 years. They've upgraded the electronics here and there, but that's about it. That's incredibly static when you consider how other fields of technology have improved."

Static, state, status quo. The enemy of progress and human advancement.

"Q: One of the issues that always comes up when discussing commercial involvement in NASA spaceflight is the safety issue. A lot of the critics of your program have focused on that concern as the sticking point. NASA certainly devotes a lot of attention to safety assurance, and some say that's why it's so expensive to put humans into space. Any attempt to cut corners on that would make the whole enterprise look questionable. How do you respond to that?A: Well, first of all, I suspect that the people saying that wouldn't have a problem flying on Southwest Airlines or driving a car or taking other types of transport that are not government-operated. The government does have a role in safety oversight, and anything we do for NASA goes through an extremely rigorous safety and liability examination. But I think what actually needs to happen is a dramatic improvement in safety. The current state of affairs with the shuttle is not acceptable at all. The shuttle's accident rate is not OK. Who would get on an airplane if you had a 1.5 percent chance of dying?"

Slap! Very nicely said. NASA has a horrific safety record. No business could ever survive with that terrible of a record. The private sector makes us safer, not government.

A Small Step in the Right Direction

A Small Step in the Right Direction
by Mark Luedtke

The Founding Fathers understood human nature and how government perverted human nature to the detriment of the people in general. The anti-Federalists understood that the Federalists had pulled a fast one on the people when they created the Constitution. They understood that the Constitution would enable the federal government to grow and seize control of all aspects of life in America. They created the Bill of Rights in an attempt to keep that from happening. It wasn’t enough.

It’s a fact of life that security is an inherently personal matter. Predators don’t attack when a policeman is standing close by. They don’t attack when you have a bunch of friends who outnumber them. They don’t attack when you’re strong and they’re weak. Predators attack when they think they have the upper hand, generally when you’re alone or with your family and they outnumber you. The Founding Fathers understood this, and they immortalized their wisdom for dealing with predators, those in the government and out, in the Second Amendment. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” They were telling us the only way we could truly be secure is if we provided our own security. I bet every murder victim comes to that harsh realization right before they die.

Right about now many readers are thinking I’m crazy for wanting to go back to the wild west. But the wild west is a fantasy created by novelists and movie makers. The reality is the west was a remarkably peaceful place. According to historian W. Eugene Hollon, “the Western frontier was a far more civilized, more peaceful, and safer place than American society is today.” Voluntary associations of people worked together to provide security, making it one of the most peaceful periods in American history. The biggest cattle towns, typically portrayed as lawless by Hollywood, were arguably the safest cities in the US. Until government took over. The shootout at the OK Corral was sparked by a local gun ban. But nobody wants to watch movies of hardworking people farming, ranching, mining and trading in the peaceful west.

Authoritarians have so perverted American society that we have no knowledge of what a peaceful society is like. Instead we’ve surrendered responsibility for protecting ourselves to government agents, and many locales have given government agents a monopoly on carrying weapons in clear violation of the Second Amendment with catastrophic consequences. Whether it be the mass murder in Luby’s in Texas, the one at Virginia Tech or dozens of others, disarmed Americans have proven easy prey for predators.

But other predators strike far more frequently. A SWAT team in Tuscon recently gunned down Marine veteran Jose Guerena in his home then forbade paramedics to treat him while he bled to death. Last year a police officer in Seattle shot a man in the street from behind. Government agents commit legal murder like this so often that we don’t hear about it because it’s not newsworthy. Worse, a cop is more likely than a member of the general population to illegally murder or sexually assault you. That’s because the violent nature of government attracts the most violent people to work for it. Where else can a thug get his jollies kicking in doors and shooting people with impunity? We’ve turned control of the asylum over to the inmates, and we’re reaping the whirlwind as a result.

The old saying that an armed society is a polite society is true because thugs are afraid to meet armed resistance. Everywhere gun laws have been liberalized in the US, crime has gone down. So after Governor Kasich signs a law that will allow Ohioans with concealed carry permits to carry into establishments that sell alcohol, Ohio will become a safer place. Ohio will join other states including Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia and Virginia taking this small step toward greater freedom, security and constitutional government. We know those states haven’t suffered violence associated with similar laws because the press would have covered any single violent incident like it was the end of the world. Ubiquitous, institutionalized violence by government agents isn’t worthy of coverage, but that would be.

This is also a victory for property rights. Business owners will be allowed to decide if they want to allow firearms in their establishments or not. I’m overwhelmed with the government’s generosity in allowing property owners to make their own decisions regarding their properties, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for government to lift the smoking ban.

But Ohio’s march in the right direction on gun laws continues. Another bill in the Ohio House would allow Ohioans with concealed carry permits to carry in churches, colleges, day care centers and government buildings. With Republicans in control of both houses and the governor’s office, this bill has a decent chance of passing.

We’re losing our rights and prosperity so fast that it’s especially sweet to celebrate the small victories that advance freedom and the security and prosperity that always flow from freedom.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Murphy smacks down Krugman again.

TAX AND SPEND:

Boortz claims Obama's empty threat to withhold Social Security checks if Republicans don't cave to his demands has scared enough seniors that Republicans are feeling the heat.

Republican Senator vows to hold up every appropriations bill until Democrats propose a budget.

"Adopting a federal budget is not optional. The Congressional Budget Act requires the federal government to operate under a duly enacted budget, and sets out an annual timetable for the Congressional budget process. The Democrats have simply been ignoring the law because they think it is in their political interest to do so. They don’t want voters to see, in black and white, their plan to raise taxes while simultaneously expanding the national debt, with no end in sight.Currently, the Democrats are bringing to the Senate floor a series of appropriations bills for FY 2012, which begins in October. This is plainly illegal under the Congressional Budget Act, Section 303(c)(1) of which provides:
(c) APPLICATION TO APPROPRIATION MEASURES IN THE SENATE.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Until the concurrent resolution on the budget for a fiscal year has been agreed to and an allocation has been made to the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate under section 302(a) for that year, it shall not be in order in the Senate to consider any appropriation bill or joint resolution, amendment or motion thereto, or conference report thereon for that year or any subsequent year.
The Democrats intend to circumvent Section 303(c)(1) by asking for the Senate’s unanimous consent to waive that provision. Today, Senator Sessions said that he will call a point of order under 303(c)(1) with respect to any appropriations bill brought forward by the Democrats, until such time as they agree to adopt a budget. This will force Harry Reid to hold a vote, and the bill can proceed only if a majority of Senators are willing to go on record by voting to waive the legal requirement of a budget."

This idea sounds great in theory right up until Democrats put through some appropriation bill for some extremely sympathetic group like war veterans or disabled children or something like that, then the people let their emotions run amok and turn on those holding up the process.

I'm telling you, the fix is in on this debt ceiling baloney.

"A plan by the Senate's two top leaders to allow President Obama to raise the debt limit without congressional approval is emerging as the most likely strategy to avoid a looming federal default.
The plan being drafted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada would lock in roughly $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next ten years — a figure considerably smaller than Republican leaders or President Obama had been seeking."

This is a complete joke. Congress can't allow Obama to do this. He'll either raise the debt ceiling on his own or he won't. If he does it, Congress can't stop him without legislation that can't pass or impeaching him which can't pass either. He may pay lip service to spending cuts, but as soon as he lifts the debt ceiling and forces Congress to vote to lower it, any cuts he agreed to will be out the window. This is the 14th amendment thing I've been talking about all along, and McConnell is trying to get Democrats on record supporting cuts before Obama does it, but I think this has been a fait accompli for a week or more.

"Under the emerging proposal, Obama would be able to order increases in the debt ceiling on his own, without congressional approval."

This is a non-sequitur. If the 14th amendment gives Obama to raise the debt ceiling on his own, any agreement by Reid and McConnell is unnecessary. If the 14th amendment doesn't give Obama that power, Reid and McConnell can't give it to him. And note that there will be no Congressional vote to give it to him. It will literally be outside the law, i.e. illegal. They know there will be no consequences. Propagandists say defaulting on our debt would make us a banana republic. I think this level of lawlessness makes us a banana republic.

REGULATION:

Big companies are using IP to chase independent entrepreneurs out of the software market. That's exactly what IP was designed to do. It works great.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The Fed issues a gag order against internal critics. Apparently there is dissension in the ranks.

Analysis of Bernanke's QE programs by non-Austrian economists estimates...

"Our estimates show that these negative effects, resulting from the Fed’s two rounds of quantitative easing (QE1 and QE2), are sizable and may help account for the lackluster character of the current recovery. The negative effects estimated here should therefore be taken into account when evaluating the net potential benefits of any monetary stimulus."
"Using our mid-point estimate of $14.35 trillion of interest-sensitive assets, a 4.93 percentage point reduction in interest rates annually cost the economy $371 billion in spending, 3.5 million jobs, and 2.53 percent of GDP. This is a sizable effect, given that during this time GDP grew by only 2.33 percent and the economy added only 870,000 jobs."

Ouch. Interest on savings is valuable, that creation of wealth adds to our economy, and Bernanke stole that from all of us.

EDUCATION:

You can't blame our economic woes on young people, but Greenspan is correct that because the federal government took over control of government schools in earnest with the creation of the Department of Education in 1979, they've received the worst education of any generation in American history, and therefore they're not as competitive and neither is our country.

HEALTH CARE:

It turns out most of the scooters you see fat people ride around in were paid for by Medicare fraud. I'm not surprised.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Mexican government discovers large marijuana plantation. Agents will destroy most of it, sell some of it, keep some it for themselves, the price of marijuana will go up a little, and the Mexican drug gangs will get richer, better armed and more deadly.

POLICE STATE:

It's rare that judges declare a mistrial because of all too common prosecutorial misconduct, but the judge in the Roger Clemens case did just that. It pays to be so famous the press covers your trial. I bet the prosecutors are livid. They get away with this stuff every day, and for a judge to suddenly call them on it must tick them off.

POLITICS:

This ad shows Ron Paul is serious about winning.

MEDIA:

The revelations of wiretaps by a News Corp newspaper in Britain gave the US government an excuse to unleash its dogs on Foxnews. They'll find stuff, the same stuff every news organization does, and they'll use it to attack Foxnews. It's going to be a witch hunt with all the usual leaks of real and false information to slime Foxnews as much as possible.

"Facing an angry backlash by lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic, Murdoch told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that corporate executives would create an independent, internal committee to "investigate every charge of improper conduct.""

It can't be both independent and internal. He should have hired an outside investigator.

""It is revolting to imagine that members of the media would seek to compromise the integrity of a public official for financial gain in the pursuit of yellow journalism," King wrote."

What hypocrisy. Government agents compromise the integrity of anybody they choose in order to advance their personal agendas.

MISC:

I enjoy reading the Onion. It's nice to know that other people recognize some of the idiocy in the world that never gets publicized. For example, this article lampoons the pervasive corruption and stupidity government funded science we see every day but nobody in the press will talk about:

"New Study Shows People With Panic Disorders Respond Poorly To Being Locked In Underwater Elevators"

Awesome. Here's a perfect, real example:

"Loss of predators in the food chain can alter the ecosystem"

I wonder how much money government stole from us to figure that out.

"The review was conducted by two dozen scientists in six countries. It was funded by the National Science Foundation in the USA, Canada's Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and others."

Who would have guessed?

""I think this might be the most important paper Science has published in a long time," says Paul Dayton, an oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego."

I think it might be the biggest waste of money. Here's another one:

"The subjects were significantly more likely to remember information if they thought they would not be able to find it later. “Participants did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statement they had read,” the authors write."

The world might end because people didn't bother to memorize useless trivia that they knew they could look up later. Oh the humanity. Money stolen from us funneled to political activists posing as scientists who then turn around and publish pseudo-scientific papers to promote the political interests of the thieves who fund them.

In the private sector, businesses profit in proportion to the service he provides to others. Therefore people in the private sector adopt principles promoting honesty and hard work. But government thrive in proportion to how much power it exerts over others. Therefore people in the government sector adopt principles promoting coercion and control. It's also not surprising that the people who make the law think of themselves as the above the law, and therefore not subject to it. Of course the people who are attracted to this profession are people predisposed to forcing others to bend to their will.

Praise for the entrepreneur.