Economy

US ranks 12th on prosperity list. We're falling fast.

Only one of the top ten fastest growing economic sectors requires a college degree.

Tax and Spend

Obama offers to raise tax rates only on people making over $400,000 a year, up from $250,000. How generous of him.

IRS tracking of the migration patterns of taxpayers is being canceled because it shows that taxpayers flee high tax states and locals for low tax states and locals. This might be the only federal program canceled in decades.

Politics

South Carolina government names first black Senator since Reconstruction from the south to replace Jim DeMint.

Health Care

It's a good bet that the Connecticut shooter, like so many others, was taking Big Pharma drugs that triggered this shooting. All the talk of gun control is a distraction from government's root causes of these events: disarmed victims and drugged up shooters.

Freedom of Speech

Pirate Party disputes claims of losses by movie and music moguls to piracy.

Police State

Law claims double standard for Muslims regarding terrorist charges.

"Under the law, this newly created "terrorism" crime is committed whenever one acts with the "intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population", but the law contains no definition of that term."

Because every act of government is an act of coercion, doesn't that mean every act of government is a terrorist act that should be prosecuted?

"The court ultimately concludes, unanimously, that "terrorism" charges are inappropriate for Morales because acts of gang violence "do not match our collective understanding of what constitutes a terrorist act", whatever this "collective understanding" might be. This reasoning is essentially the same as what US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart infamously offered when applying laws criminalizing obscenity, which, he said, entails "the task of trying to define what may be indefinable". Opining that "obscenity" means "hard-core pornography", he explained: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.""

Why is this so surprising? Every law is interpreted by a person. There is no rule of law. There is only rule by people. Why should we be surprised that in the US, Muslims are more easily charged, prosecuted and convicted of terrorism than others? This is the nature of government.

"But the Court of Appeals went much further. It reversed the conviction on all of the counts - including the non-terrorism counts - and ordered a new trial. That was necessary, said the court, because there are special rules that govern a trial whenever a defendant is charged with "terrorism", and these rules are so permissive, so designed to ensure conviction, that it is inherently unfair to convict someone under these rules who is not charged with terrorism."

I'm happy Greenwald reports this, but there's nothing surprising here.

"What the court is admitting here is amazing. It is saying that when someone is accused of terrorism, the rules governing trials and law completely change. All sorts of things that the state is normally barred from doing on the grounds that it is unjust suddenly become permissible when someone faces terrorism charges. Indeed, so "prejudicial" are these special rules of "justice" for terrorism cases that anyone convicted under these rules is, by definition, treated unfairly if terrorism is inapplicable."

It's not amazing. Apparently Greenwald has never been involved in a rape trial. This is common in the corrupt US conviction system. There's nothing unusual, let alone amazing, about it.

Local

This isn't the first local report of a copycat after the media spent an entire weekend promoting the killer in Connecticut. Mass murders are sort of like storms. They more that occur, the better for the press. The difference is the press can foment more mass murders, and it does.

Health Care

Another place besides schools in which government fails to protect the most vulnerable Americans is in nursing homes.

"The average fine paid by Ohio nursing homes over the past three years for accidental injuries, neglect and other deficiencies was $8,128, or about $2,000 below the national average, according figures from the U.S. Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently compiled by ProPublica."

This is a scam. These facilities pay big donations to politicians so they can abuse their patients with few repercussions.

"On a state-by-state comparison, Ohio was the 20th most punitive state in the country based on the average fine per nursing home. Washington State led the nation with an average fine of just over $90,000 per nursing home, while neighboring Oregon recorded the lowest average fine of about $1,300 per home, based on calculations dividing the total number of nursing homes by the total amount of fines levied in each state."

While this may seem to mean Washington is a good state for patients of nursing homes because the government charges stiff fines, the way are calculated might imply just the opposite. As usual, the media fails to provide enough information, in this case the number of incidents drawing fines, for us to tell.

Politics

Yesterday I wrote that I was skeptical that newly elected conservatives in Japan would cut spending because they get rich off more spending just like politicians everywhere. Today I read this:

"An LDP win will usher in a government committed to a tough stance in a territorial row with China, a pro-nuclear energy policy despite last year's Fukushima disaster and a potentially risky prescription for hyper-easy monetary policy and big fiscal spending to beat deflation and tame a strong yen."

You can't make this stuff up. This is evil. These politicians, like all politicians, know their policies are looting and destroying their countries, but they adopt them to loot as much money as possible for themselves before the crash, so they can then escape to their giant vacation villas overseas. And we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Voters vote against big government every election, but since their only option is another big government party, the downward spiral accelerates every election.

Global Warming and Energy

Only government would pay people to get degrees in writing computer games and pretend they were doing science.

"From extreme drought to super storms, many wonder what the future holds for the climate of the eastern United States. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, does away with the guessing.
Results show the region will be hotter and wetter.
Joshua Fu, a civil and environmental engineering professor, and Yang Gao, a graduate research assistant, developed precise scales of cities which act as a climate crystal ball seeing high resolution climate changes almost 50 years into the future."

I can model cities and run the program for a 100 years. Wooptedo.

No trend in hurricane landfall either.

Misc

Martian rocks look similar to shale, but cannot be formed by the same process, so NASA is wrong.

Tax and Spend

Apparently NASA has appointed itself the debunker of bizarro world Mayan calendar destruction theories, stealing more of our money in the process. Instead of wasting our money, it should sit silently until 12/22, and all will be debunked.

Apparently the NRA has gone dark on social media, probably because it was overwhelmed with attackers. Too bad. This would be a great opportunity to show sympathy for the victims and highlight how the government enabled them to be murdered in mass by disarming the teachers and staff at the school.

If you remember before the election, Obama wanted to raise $800 billion over ten years by raising taxes on the rich. Not to be outdone in the big government sweepstakes, Boehner proposes raising $1 trillion and tax rates on millionaires. Words cannot describe how much I loath this phony.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Two formerly pro-gun Democrat senators switch positions to support new assault weapon regulations.

Here's the dirty secret behind the opportunistic calls for more gun control:

"Following the devastating mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., support for stricter gun control laws is now the highest it's been in a decade and has surged 18 points since the spring of this year, according to a new CBS News poll."

It's all about self interest.

Austin gun store is offering a discount to teachers to obtain a concealed carry license. That's what I'm talking about. Can teachers carry in Texas? Let's hope so.

"“We need to start thinking out of the box and deal with this violent culture,” said Keller. “We need to lobby our various state governments to allow teachers to be armed.”"

Apparently not.

Rush Limbaugh points out how much of the reporting by the media in the wake of Friday's massacre was wrong. It was crazy how wrong they were. I hope the older brother who the media accused of being the shooter sues and ends up owning CNN and Salon.

It sounds like FBI informants misidentified the shooter first, then informed their media subordinates. Isn't that convenient since the media can blame the FBI and the government can reject being sued? Once again we see that the media is nothing more than the propaganda arm of government.

Nice analysis of Obama's speech last night.

"How awful to watch Obama take the focus off the slain children and their families, and direct it on to himself, the State, and the unceasing hunger for more power. He tries to play a religious role--the State hates and envies God--and calls the dead "our children," to diminish the place of their parents. The State has long sought to abolish the role of parents, of course, and substitute its judges, cops, teachers, and social workers."

It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I don't think the government staged the Connecticut shooting, but the system in which the government disarms victims while the press promotes the mass murderers creates them. The government doesn't need to stage them advance their totalitarian interests. They've rigged the system so they happen frequently anyway.

"The news coverage of this latest atrocity follows a predictable pattern: police officers, armed soldiers, and federal FBI and ATF functionaries, are on the scene as a reminder of the top-down system of order that the shootings have just refuted. The mayor, state governor, and president each holds a press conference to assure their respective herds that all is under control, their control."

All of these organizations and all of these people failed, but the press still promotes them as our protectors. We're supposed to believe that surrendering more of our power to them will make us safer. We've fallen for that a million times, and it never works. It can't work. We must stop falling for it.

I had never heard the Bath School disaster in which a bomber killed 38 elementary students and two teachers in 1927. Naturally it was carried out by a wannabe politician.

Tax and Spend

Not satisfied with his first two preemptive surrenders, Boehners surrenders a third time by offering increased tax rates on millionaires. It would be comical if it wasn't so destructive.

Politics

Pat Buchanan explains why unions are so upset with Michigan's right to work law and the political implications.

"Michigan just legislated the open shop.
And behind the blue-collar bellicosity in Lansing is this new reality. Non-union workers can now "free ride" on union contracts. This is close to a non-survivable wound for labor.
Workers who do not belong to unions will cease paying dues, and union members will begin quietly to quit and pocket their dues money.
Why pay dues if you don't have to? Why contribute a dime to a union PAC if you don't have to, or don't like labor's candidates?"

This could be the key for a recovery in Michigan.

"Michigan workers are not going to suffer. They have simply been given the freedom to join or not join a union, to pay or not pay dues. And while wages in right-to-work states such as Virginia, Tennessee, Texas and Florida are slightly below those of other states, employment in right-to-work states is higher. "

This is the economic reality. Coercive unions artificially raise the price of labor above the market price. The consequence is fewer workers are hired and the companies who hire them become less competitive until they eventually go out of business.

"But union power is going to be circumscribed as non-union workers elect to free-ride and union members start resigning. And just as Michigan saw Indiana creating jobs after passing right-to-work, other states may observe Michigan and go forth and do likewise."

Let's hope Ohio follows ASAP. While getting the following mechanism right, he gets the blame all wrong.

"A second blow came with the postwar rise of Germany and Japan. Their plants and equipment were all newer than ours. Their wages were far lower, as they did not carry the burden of defending the Free World. Under our defense umbrella, they began to invade and capture our markets.
And Uncle Sam let them do it.
A third blow to Big Labor, concentrated in the Frost Belt, came from the Sun Belt. With air conditioning making summers tolerable, the South offered less expensive and more reliable labor than a North where union demands were constant and strikes common.
But the mortal blow to American unions came from globalization.
With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China propelling hundreds of millions of new workers into the global hiring hall, U.S. multinationals saw historic opportunity.
If they could move factories out of the U.S.A., they would be free of union demands, wage-and-hour laws, occupational health and safety laws, environmental laws and civil rights law. By outsourcing, they could produce for a fraction of the cost of doing so in the U.S.A."

Buchanan identifies a plethora of government policies as the problem, but then he blames foreign countries and globalization. The problem isn't overseas. It's in Washington D.C., state capitals and local government offices. I'm ignoring his first point blaming automation. Capital doesn't get rid of net jobs. It just makes them more efficient so workers can create more wealth and earn higher wages.

"And if they could get the U.S. political class, in return for corporate generosity at election time, to let them bring their foreign-made goods back to the U.S.A., tax and tariff free, profits would explode, and salaries and bonuses with them. "

Buchanan really goes off the rails when he advocates protectionism.

Conservatives win big in Japan, but I doubt they will cut government. Like politicians here, they get rich off government intervention.

Global Warming and Energy

While the leaked IPCC report mentions one line regarding the strong solar forcing of climate, it fails to delve into the copious research supporting the claim.

Another refutation of the myth that we're experiencing more extreme weather because of global warming.

Federal Reserve

Printing money foments revolution.

"What do Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Algeria all have in common?
Apart from violent street protests or outright revolution, they are the world’s most profligate printers of money."

"Based on monetary inflation trends over the last two years, those countries most at risk of social upheaval in the coming months are Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina and India."

Guess who just started printing money like crazy again.

How the Fed is socializing our country by transferring our wealth to a handful of big banks which it effectively owns.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Wanting to be first to capitalize on the Connecticut shooting, California Senator Diane Feinstein promises to introduce new gun control legislation next session.

Health Care

The establishment voted "eating like a cave man" the worst diet trend of 2012. They're scared, and they should be. Their generations of lies and the poor health that came from them are crumbling around them.

Compare that to this story about the damaging effect of grains.

War

Bradley Manning finally appeared in court and described the terrible conditions in which the government keeps him, but the media didn't show up.

"“Why did readers of The Times have to turn to Ed Pilkington of The Guardian, or to one of the great number of other news organizations that sent reporters, to hear Private Manning tell of the Mordor into which he had been drawn—where he had to stand naked, in chains, in the ‘maximum custody’ brig at Quantico, Va., imploring his prison guards for something as simple as toilet paper, or, earlier, in a ‘cage’ in Kuwait?” "

Because the media is the propagandist of the state.