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Net Neutrality?

February 26, 2015

Here is a video of The President talking about net neutrality.

Sounds like he really wants to protect us, the little guys, from big corporations doesn’t it. Why should we believe the man who pushed a bill titled, “The Affordable Care Act”? Obamacare has made individuals less free to choose how they want to pay for their healthcare. Insurance companies were for this law because they thought they would benefit from its passage. With the stroke of the pen, the law created 30 million more costumers for insurance companies. The fact that it expanded Governments power over the individual makes politicians and bureaucrats happy. But who among us wouldn’t want our power expanded? Is the term “Net Neutrality” any different from “The Affordable Care Act”.

You can bet your life that Net Neutrality regulations will make the internet less neutral, less free, and more expensive.

Net neutrality laws will help the already established tech companies and hurt the upstart competitors who, under normal market conditions, would normally be a check on the big providers. The threat of competitors trying to get market share keeps them in line. This is what Uber is doing to the taxi cartel. Big tech companies will be for this, or at least be tepid in their resistance to it. Once Government regulates the internet, these tech companies will be the protected cartel.

Politicians and bureaucrats will not only be able to tax the internet more easily, they will be able to make rules about content, access, and will probably make you get a license to have a website. Think of what bureaucrats (Lois Lerner) in the IRS did to stifle liberty minded groups from getting their message out. Politicians and bureaucrats are only in favor of free speech if they agree with what is said, they are never neutral when it comes to losing power.

Politicians and bureaucrats have been trying for years to figure out how to intervene into the internet. The internet is what has allowed our economy to grow in spite of the interventions by the Government and the Fed. Now, for some reason, the President and bureaucrats want to intervene into an area of the economy that has had exponential expansion without the “help” of Government regulations.

IS THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERNET COMING SOON?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2mzMcRPO2I

DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED TYRANTS

Tyrants want to control information because truth is never on their side. Even democratically elected tyrants want to have the ability to control and/or propagandize their message. The internet is a marketplace where truth can be discovered, and lies can be uncovered, because of the volume of information that can be brought to bear almost immediately.

The President, the FCC, most democrats, and some republicans are showing their true tyrannical colors by supporting these regulations, but the internet Jeannie is out of the bottle. The marketplace will find ways to deliver this highly demanded economic good outside of these Government regulations. The tighter they squeeze, the more we will slip through their hands.

Related Article – Beck Breaks Down What He Thinks Is The Real Goal Of Net Neutrality, at theblaze.com.

Related Article – Internet Fast Lanes Would Be Banned Under Planned FCC Proposal, at entrepreneur.com.

 

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Must Reads For The Week 12/12/14

December 13, 2014
The pen is mightier than the sword...

 The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)

Why So Many Health Insurance Plans Canceled By Obamacare, by John Lott , at johnrlott.blogspot.com. This short video explains how insane the rules are in the The Affordable Care Act. The only reason you would make rules like this is if you want them to fail, so you can try to go to a single payer Government system.

Indications Of What Obamacare Is Really Going To Be Like Begin To Emerge, at economicpolicyjournal.com. It doesn’t matter if Government promises you healthcare, free or otherwise, if there is no one willing to supply it.

30 of the 60 Democrat Senators Who Voted For Obamacare Are No Longer Employed By “The People”, by Philip Klein, at washingtonexaminer.com. The cost of voting for a socialist healthcare scheme is a Senate seat. Unfortunately I don’t think the establishment Republicans want to get rid of Obamacare.

Fighting Free Markets: Orlando Government Wants Uber To Charge 25% More Than Taxis, at economicpolicyjournal.com. This is one way Government tries to “level the playing field”.  Orlando Fla. is trying to reclassify Uber rides as livery vehicles. Uber drivers would be forced to charge 25% more than the minimum taxi rate. Get this, taxi companies say they are afraid Uber drivers would ignore the new regulation; no, really, they wouldn’t do that. The next step would be to have the police enforce the new regulation. I can see the headline now: “Uber Driver Shot Dead By Police For Failing To Charge Rider A Higher Fare”.

N.Y.C. Would Have City Develop Its Own Taxi-Hailing App, by Eric Pfeiffer, at govexec.com. Here is another way Government tries to create a level playing field. City Council Member Ben Kallos is proposing a bill to authorize the creation of a city sponsored app for hailing traditional city cabs. First question, is there a reason taxi companies can’t create the app themselves? Answer, yes, because there is a New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission that regulates these businesses. The Taxi Cartel didn’t know that when they made their deal with the devil to protect their monopoly position, that the devil would some day prevent them from competing with an upstart competitor that could not be foreseen when the deal was made. Does anyone really think the Government can create a competitive app? Before you answer, think healthcare.gov. Ah: “Hoisted by one’s own petard“.

Do Leftists Have Any Idea How Supply And Demand Work? at economicpolicyjournal.com. Is Uber price Gouging in San Francisco, or are they rationing a scarce resource according to the law of supply and demand?

The Runaway Trillions, at targetliberty.com. The national debt is $18,000,000,000,000.00 (that’s 18 trillion), and growing exponentially.

Detroit West: California Pension Plans Are Running Dry, at economicpolicyjournal.com. This is what happens when you pay labor more than what it produces. The difference between California’s debt and the Federal Governments debt? The Federal Government can get the Fed to electronically print counterfeit money to finance their debt, and States can’t.

How The Fed Grows Government, by Hunter Hastings, at mises.org. Money printing by central banks is the only thing that has allowed Governments to grow so big.

With Q3 Buy Back Surging, These Are The Top 20 purchasers Of Their Own Stock, at zerohedge.com. Using the Feds electronically printed counterfeit money, companies are purchasing back their stock in order to boost the price. Low supply means higher price. The stock market is a bubble activity.

Peter Schiff Educates CNBC Host About Inflation, at targetliberty.com.

 

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Observations From The Margin

November 6, 2014

Observation Tower

 

OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE ELECTION

What does the Republican party gaining control of the Senate, increasing their majority in the House, and winning Governorships in Democratic strongholds like Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland tell us?

-Maybe a growing number of individuals are finally seeing what big Government central planning really looks like, and they don’t like it. The President’s interventionist policies over the last 6 years made him the face of big Government. This made it possible for Republicans to run against him specifically, instead of running against a faceless entity called big Government.

– When the President said “his policies were on the ballot”, no truer statement has ever come out of his mouth. In his press conference the day after the election though, he tried to spin his way out of that statement. It didn’t work. He said the election showed ” the people” wanted their Government to “get stuff done”. No Mr. President, with all due respect, many people want You to get out of their lives and leave them alone. They want the Government to stop “doing stuff”, and/or repeal “the stuff” you have already implemented.

-I love how politicians say “the people” as if it’s a monolithic entity that has a single mind. “The People” is made up of millions of unique individuals. This fact is the reason why Big Government central planning won’t work, because one plan can’t please millions of individuals. Individuals are only happy when they are allowed to make choices based on what they value, not “the” choice that some totalitarian politician tries to force on them.

-If Republicans think that “the people” are now on their side, they are sadly mistaken. I think many individuals understood that the only way to stop the current Government intervention into their lives was to vote in Republicans and try to hold their feet to the fire. Many of us know there is no chance that the Democrat party will ever be for smaller Government. But that doesn’t mean the Republicans are for smaller Government. If establishment Republicans don’t try to stop the growth of Government, if they won’t stand up to the President, guess what happens in the next election.

-If the implementation of Obamacares employer mandate had been implemented in 2014, instead of unconstitutionally delaying it until 2015; if the shale oil revolution hadn’t created a vast majority of the new jobs the President is taking credit for; how much worse would Nov. 4th had been.

-Republican analysts  moan about the fact that Romney got 4 million fewer Republican votes than Bush got in 2004, and crow about the fact that they got 5% more votes from Independents than Obama. They say if the Republicans had turned out, they would have won. Did they ever consider that the 4 million Republican votes they didn’t get are actually the 5% increase in independents. Many Independents used to be Republicans and probably still vote Republican.

-The Republican establishment doesn’t like the tea party and the libertarian wing of their party. Why? Because the tea party and the libertarians want Government to shrink while the establishment just wants to win elections so it can take big Government for a test drive. Do we realize that we are putting individuals in power and asking them to give up some of the power they wield? How hard is it to get rid of entitlements? Being in power is the ultimate entitlement.

-Alaska (69%), Arkansas (65%), South Dakota (55%), and Nebraska ((59%), all passed laws that increased the minimum wage. How can voters in these states who voted against expanding Government on the one hand, vote for Government intervention on the other? We know that economic reality won’t allow minimum wage laws to work like the central planners planned (Read: Minimum Wage Laws Create Unemployment). But, from The stand point of individual liberty, do these voters understand that they are interfering with a contract to which the employer and the employee voluntarily agreed. Do they realize that on the same ballot they voted to intervene in individuals lives, and to stop individuals in Government from interfering into their own lives. We have a lot of work to do in educating individuals about economics and individual liberty.

-It has taken 100 years of progressivism to get to this point in time where Government is involved In every aspect of our lives. How long do you think it will take to turn the ship around? It will take more than a few elections cycles. As F. A. Hayek said, “The battle for freedom must be won over and over again, the socialists of all parties must be persuaded or defeated if they and we are to remain free men“. The battle for individual freedom is going to be won at the state and local levels. Governors have to have the stones to stand up to the Federal Government. Rolling back Government is going to happen from the bottom up not from the top down in D.C.

LET’S LAUGH!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Are We Losing Economic Freedom?

October 15, 2014

Capitalism 3D sphere Word Cloud Concept with great terms such as economic, private, free and more. - stock photo

The Fraser Institute published a paper titled, Economic Freedom Of The World: 2013 Annual Report, which shows how the US is in the slow lane on the Road to Serfdom, because we as individuals have lost economic freedom over the past 12 years. Economic freedom is nothing more than each individual deciding what to produce, consume, exchange, and save without anyone, especially Government bureaucrats, hampering or intervening in his activities. Individuals are less free today than they were in 2000.

Scroll down to page 148 in the report to see the statistics for the United States in different categories related to freedom, from 1980 to 2011. The report rates 154 countries on economic freedom, with a 10 being the highest rating. It also ranks each country in order of most free to least free. Our freedom rating and rank has dropped since our high in 2000.

CATEGORY     (rate/rank)                    80               90              00               11

UNITED STATES

Summary  (rating/rank)                  7.92/3      8.35/3      8.65/2        7.74/19

Size of Government                           5.08/49    6.71/24   7.03/34    6.83/47

Legal System/Property Rights     8.35/1       8.35/10   9.23/9        6.93/38

Sound Money                                      9.22/5       9.68/7      9.78/2       9.30/36

Freedom Of Trade Inter.                8.77/7       8.77/11    8.78/22    7.92/30

Regulation                                            8.11/4         8.23/4      8.43/2       7.75/17

 

Below is Hong Kong’s summary rating and rank for economic freedom. Go to page 62 to see a more detailed report on Hong Kong.

HONG KONG                                              80                90                00               11

Summary  (rating/rank)                 9.02/1        8.59/1       8.86/1        8.87/1

Hong Kong was under British rule for 156 years until 1997 when it was turned over to China. Hong Kong has had more economic freedom under British colonial rule, and Chinese communism than the US has had under a constitutional republic with leaders elected democratically. People in Hong Kong have been protesting recently because it looks like China is going back out on its promise to allow democratic elections in 2015. The people in Hong Kong should take a look at the US to see what democratic elections have done to our economic freedom, before they go all in for democracy. Democracy is just one possible means for gaining individual freedom, but it is no guarantee of individual freedom. Read, Thomas Sowell Explains How Democracy And Freedom Are Not The Same Thing.

Three of the categories, listed in the above article, that the Fraser Institute rates and ranks countries on their level of economic freedom are; legal system/property rights, regulation, and sound money. The US has decreased in rate and rank in these three categories over the last decade.

REGULATION

The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is just one example of  the thousands of pages of regulations, passed by congress and signed into law by the President, that take away economic freedom by imposing  huge costs on businesses. Where does the Government get the power to interfere with an individuals right to make a contract with another party on how he chooses to pay for his healthcare? Nowhere in the constitution do politicians and bureaucrats have a right to do this. They’ve usurped the power from us, and the Supreme Court, which has turned into a nine seat legislature, uphold their lawlessness. Read Regulatory-Industrial Complex, by Lew Rockwell, at mises.org, for more analysis on what regulation does to economic freedom.

SOUND MONEY

We could talk endlessly about how important sound money is for economic freedom, but here is the short version. When the Federal Reserve electronically prints counterfeit money, it is theft. What you produce each day at work is represented in the money your employer gives you in exchange for your labor. You in turn can demand goods and services with the money you are paid. The stable purchasing power of the monetary unit is what sound money guarantees. When the Federal Reserve electronically prints counterfeit money, it is decreasing the purchasing power of each dollar you have, and therefore stealing your production. If you or I counterfeit money it is theft. If the Fed counterfeits, it is still theft, it is simply theft that is sanctioned by the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of Government. Read, Is The Surge In Capital Goods Orders Do To Malinvestment, by Frank Shostak, at mises.org, to understand what happens when the Fed counterfeits.

PROPERTY RIGHTS

Without property rights there is no economic freedom. If an individual has no assurances that what he produces or owns can’t be taken away, then economic freedom is just meaningless rhetoric by politicians. There is the obvious taking of property through eminent domain laws (Kelo vs. New London), civil asset forfeiture laws, federal taxes etc, and then there is the unseen taking of property through the cost of complying with regulations, and out right stealing it by electronically printing counterfeit money. Read “Human Rights As Property Rights, by Murray N. Rothbard, at mises.org, to see how property rights are the foundation of economic freedom.

As F. A. Hayek said, “the battle for freedom must be won over and over again, the socialists of both parties must be persuaded or defeated if they and we are to remain free men.” These words are more true today then when he wrote them.

 

-I found the, Economic Freedom Of The World: 2013 Annual Report, in this article titled, The “Land Of The Free” Ranks 36th In The World In Respecting Property Rights, at zerohedge.com.

 

 

 

 

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Must Reads For The Week 10/11/14

October 10, 2014
The pen is mightier than the sword...

 The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)

How Michelle Obama’s Daughters Eat vs. The Rules She Has Set Down For Public School Kids, at economicpolicyjournal.com. The fact that the ruling elite don’t have to abide by the rules they impose on the benighted masses is one thing. The more important point is, a  Government that has the power to make this mandate has too much power, and is therefore tyrannical.

How The Real World Reacts When Minimum Wage Laws Raise The Cost Of Labor Above What It Produces, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Here is the money quote from the article,“If government could transform unskilled entry-level positions into middle-income jobs, the Soviet Union would be today’s dominant world economy. Spain and Greece would be thriving.”

Mayo Clinic To Bring A Medical Kiosk To An Employer Near You, by Jeff Hansel, at m.postbulliten.com. Health care “affordability” would have taken care of itself if politicians in the Democrat party would have passed legislation that moved healthcare toward a free market system instead of passing “The Affordable Care Act”. This article is an example of markets reducing costs and providing a better product for the consumer.

Obamacare Causes Wal-Mart To Cut Benefits For Some Part Time Workers, by John Lott, by johnrlott.blogspot.com. This is the opposite of what you read about in the above post regarding the Mayo Clinic. Government intervention in the free market produces outcomes that have higher costs and inferior products.

3D Printing Entire Homes And Neighborhoods May Be Just Around The Corner, by Michael Krieger, at libertyblitzkrieg.com. Technology is in the process of changing how we do things in ways we can’t even imagine. Technology is advancing  faster than Government can regulate it (the fracking revolution is another example). This gives me hope that at some point, our current experiment with big government will someday be a chapter in history that people will read about and say, “what made them think that would work”.

“Common People Do Not Carry This Much Currency”. How Police Justify Theft via Civil Asset Forfeiture Laws, at zerohedge.com. Taking money without probable cause, is only going to escalate the tension between police and citizens. Watch the video in this post, it makes great points in a humorous way.

Hong Kong Ranks First In Economic Freedom, The US Is Twelfth, at freetheworld.com. We were ranked second in ‘2000’ , but a decade of regulation, Fed counterfeiting, loss of property rights, and growth of Government has us cheering, “we’re number 12, we’re number 12”! We are not moving toward more individual, economic, and political freedom.

How The US Ranks In Corporate Tax Rates (Not Pretty), at economicpolicyjournal.com. The US has the highest corporate tax rate in the world! We’re number 1, We’re number 1!

Upcoming Anniversary: Oct. 1st Will Mark 18 Years Of No Global Warming, by Barbara Hollingsworth, at cnsnews.com. The evidence doesn’t match the chicken little rhetoric.

A Decade After Welcoming Wind, States Reconsider, by Sean Murphy, at eaglefordtexas.com. Here is a quote form the article, “Today, many of the same political leaders who initially welcomed the wind industry want to regulate it more tightly, even in red states like Oklahoma, where candidates regularly rail against government interference.” Politicians used Government subsidies and tax breaks to allow an industry to exist that would have probably had problems competing in a free market. Government picked the winner. Now they want to regulate an industry that wouldn’t have existed without the previous regulation. Here is my advice; repeal all regulations pertaining to wind, and allow the market to pick the winners and losers.

Reasons For Political Hope, by Bruce Thornton, at victorhanson.com. I know it’s hard to believe, but I am optimistic that freedom will win out over tyranny. It may not seem like it right now but there are signs that we are starting to wake up.

 

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Incentives Matter

May 29, 2014

File:VA hospital waco 2009.jpg

The recent revelations about VA hospitals shouldn’t surprise anyone. This problem isn’t peculiar to the VA, it’s systemic in all bureaucracies. The track record of central planning is less than stellar, whether It’s government intervention in a  free market economy like the U.S., or central planning in a communist economy like the former Soviet Union. Both systems create bureaucracies that have their own incentives under which the individuals inside these bureaucracies make decisions. We can’t look at bureaucracies from the stand point of how a business operates in the free market, because the incentive structure is totally different. We might think that these bureaucrats are not acting the way we would act, if we were in their position Don’t be too quick to judge, these bureaucrats are acting exactly how they should act if you consider the incentives they operate under. In a free market, prices ration scarce goods and services, and also pass knowledge to individuals and businesses. The incentives and constraints transmitted through the market, are totally different from the incentives and constraints transmitted to bureaucracies by politicians and administrators. In the market the incentive is to provide what the consumer wants which means you first must give before you receive. A bureaucracy is a monopoly on a particular service, which means the person using the service is an annoyance rather than someone who has to be pleased. In a free market the consumer can go somewhere else if he is not satisfied. At the DMV the consumer has no other place to go to get the service. In the case of the U.S. Postal Service, consumers are choosing better options for communicating and shipping packages, and the U.S. Post Office doesn’t care because it’s getting propped up by yours and my tax dollars.

PROBLEM SOLVING

Firing Eric Shinseki and replacing him with a better “angel” won’t solve the problem, {if the problem is making sure the veterans are being taken care of}, because the incentive structure will remain the same. If the problem is trying to find political cover, than firing him will help in solve the “political” problem, at the expense of veterans lives. Watch and see if the administration fires Shinseki and then claims the problem is being take care of. Remember Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba is still open today even though the President said during and after the campaign in 08, that he was going to close it, so we know political talk and actions are responses to political incentives.

CREATING INCENTIVES

Here are a few examples of Governments creating incentives that individuals respond to.

I will quote from Thomas Sowell’s book Basic Ecomomics. “During the Stalin era in the Soviet Union, there was a severe shortage of mining equipment, but the manager of an enterprise producing such machines kept them in storage after they were produced, rather than sending them out to the mines. The reason was that the official orders called for these machines to be painted with red, oil-resistant paint and the producer had on hand only green, oil-resistant paint and red varnish that was not oil-resistant. Disobeying official orders in any respect was a serious offense and “I don’t want to get eight years,” the manager said. When the manager appealed to a higher official to use the green, oil-resistant paint, this official’s reaction was “Well, I don’t want to get eight years either.” ….None of these people were behaving irrationally. They were responding quite rationally to the incentives and constraints of the system in which they worked. “

Remember the Deepwater Horizen oil drilling rig that exploded and spilled oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Well here is what you need to know about the incentives that government created to push oil drilling farther out in the gulf. I will quote from this article Bashing BP at mises.org. “In 1995, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act (DWRRA), which was “intended to encourage natural-gas and oil development in the Gulf of Mexico in waters at least 200 meters (656 feet) deep by offering royalty relief on qualifying natural gas and oil lease sales.” This act has since expired, but there remain continued incentives for drilling in deep water.”

“In other words, the government specifically passed laws that gave the oil companies incentives to drill far offshore — that is, in deeper water where risk is presumably higher. In addition to the higher risk of accidents, the cost of solving any problems are necessarily greater in five thousand feet of water than in, say, 250 feet of water…..Who could blame a company for trying to achieve a minimum relief volume, which would guarantee billions of dollars in royalty-free sales of petroleum and natural gas?”

“Additionally, a liability cap of $75 million for the oil companies was put in place by law. This is an incredible use of the control of the political means to make favorable dealings for oneself in the economy.[1] In fact, it is the very definition of corporatism: First, individuals within a company work to get laws passed to reward companies for taking risks previously deemed unworthy of the time, energy, and capital expenditures. Then, those same individuals within the company work to get other laws passed to limit liability when things go wrong.”

CONCLUSION

The VA is a totally Government run healthcare system. Considering it treats veterans, it is relatively small compared to the amount of people Obamacare will affect. Since Government can’t manage the VA’s small sample size; how is it going to handle the amount of people in Obamacare? The short answer is, it can’t, and here are the two main reasons why.

The first is you can’t legislate abundance into existence. The first rule of economics is scarcity. We live in a world governed by scarcity and health care is not immune from this rule, no matter how much politicians want to legislate it out of existence. Scarcity means that healthcare has to be rationed in one of three ways, by prices in a free market, by fighting each other for the scarce good in a lawless society, or by an administrator or a board in a government-run system. If healthcare existed in abundance, it would not be an economic good and therefore would not have to be economised.

This reality of scarcity leads to very different incentives and constraints being created in a free market, a hampered market, or in a centrally planned socialist economy. People are self-interested individuals and will respond to the incentives and constraints created by each economic system. The consumer is sovereign in a free market system, and bureaucrats and their rules are sovereign in a centrally planned system. Think of the 2500 pages of rules in the Obamacare bill, and the 300 plus million individual citizens it is supposed to cover and ask yourself; will it work? If the end sought is to provide quality healthcare the answer is no. If the end sought is to prop up and grow government. The answer is yes. Always look for the incentives and ask; how will a self interested person respond?

Related Article – Central Planners Don’t See The Consequences Of Their Actions. Or Do They? at austrianaddict.com

Related Article – Human Action Reveals The Reality About Political Decisions, by austrianaddict.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Must Reads For The Week 3/15/14

March 15, 2014
The pen is mightier than the sword...

The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)

Obama Would Like To Tell You How To Budget, at chicksontheright.com. Where do you start with this video? The fact that the guy who has added 1 trillion dollars to the deficit on average every year since he became President is telling someone who makes 36 thousand dollars a year how to budget his money to afford health insurance is completely laughable. His Affordable Care Act has made health insurance more expensive instead of “affordable”. But what is more unbelievable about this video is when he chastises people for not budgeting money to get health insurance before they get sick because the cost of paying after they get sick is greater. Doesn’t the smartest man to ever become president realize that Obamacare creates the incentive for people to do the exactly what he is chastising them for doing. When an insurance company has to insure a person in spite of preexisting conditions,what does he think people will do. He is either ignorant, or just a politician.

NSA -Fan Feinstein Slams CIA Spying And Intimidation, at zerohedge.com. Senator Feinstein doesn’t like the CIA spying, and by default, intimidating congress, but she didn’t have a problem with the NSA intimidating all of us through data mining {spying}. She said the CIA appears to have violated the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as various federal laws and presidential executive order that prevents the agency from conducting domestic searches and surveillance. It’s not OK when her constitutional rights are violated by Government, but it’s fine when yours and my constitutional rights are violated by the NSA.

The Devil Lurking In The Retail Store Closure Details, at zerohedge.com. 1) Technology has been a part of the decrease in the need for brick and mortar stores. 2) Spending on consumer goods doesn’t grow an economy. Consumption is an act of destroying what has been produced. Production is what allows us to consume. With the work force participation rate at its lowest since the late 70’s, less is being produced, therefore less can be consumed. 3) Stimulating consumption through Government spending, the Fed electronically printing counterfeit money along with a zero interest rates policy, created a false economic reality. Brick and mortar stores were built on false information transmitted through the economy by Government stimulus and Fed printing. Under normal market conditions these stores wouldn’t have been built. Because economic forces are always trying to correct Government interventions, these stores, which should have never been built, are being liquidated. 4) Fed counterfeiting money through QE’s and zero interest rates can only give legs to a false reality for so long before economic forces eventually bring production and consumption back in balance.

Police Use Of Force Drops 60% When Officers Required To Wear Video Cameras, by Jay Syrmopoulos, at benswann.com. Complaints against police have dropped by 88% and use of force by police has dropped by 60% in one year since officers started wearing cameras. So let me see if I understand this, monitoring people in positions of power keeps them from abusing that power. The founders gave the press constitutional protection to monitor politicians and bureaucrats for the purpose of protecting us from their abuses of power. When the vast majority of the mainstream press believes in big Government, they move from being a watchdog, and toward becoming a propaganda arm of the very entity they are supposed to monitor.

Lights, Camera, Arrested: Americans Are Being Arrested For Filming Police, by John Whitehead, at rutherford.org, and How Are Lois Lerner’s Emails Not Front Page News, at gretawire.foxnewsinsider.com. These are examples of people with Government sanctioned power not wanting to be monitored, in the first article, and not being monitored by the press in the other.

Venezuelans Marked With Numbers To Stand In Lines At Government Supermarkets, by Linette Lopez, at businessinsider.com. I saw this at aei-ideas.org. This is the result when you move toward central planning, whether it is socialism, communism, crony capitalism, fascism etc, and away from free market capitalism. Look at this Graphic Of The Day: Socialism vs. Capitalism, by Mark J. Perry, at aei-ideas.com.

Liberals Protest $100 Million Donation To Hospital Because David Koch Gave The Money, by Robby Soave, at dailycaller.com. Would these leftists be protesting if the Government had given the hospital a grant of 100 million dollars, money that was not donated to the Government by taxpayers, but was taken under the threat of force by the IRS.

Articles like the ones below tell me people are starting to understand the Federal Government is not just too big but should be rolled back. Idaho Legislators Vote On Emergency Bill To Nullify Federal Gun Laws, by Michael Lofti, at benswann.com, Tennessee Legislators Vote To Nullify Some Federal Roadside Checkpoints, by Michael Lofti, at benswann.com, South Carolina Democrats and Republicans Vote To “Nullify” NSA, by Michael Lofti, at benn swann.com, and Oklahoma Legislators Pass Bill Legalizing Gold and Silver Tender: Nullify The Fed?, by Michael Lofti, at benswann.com. This last article about legalizing gold and silver as payment of debt is the one the Government will fight against the hardest. The Government wants the Fed to maintain its monopoly on money creation because the growth of the U.S. Government is financed through the Feds ability to create counterfeit money and buy Government debt. They will fight this if it passes just like they are fighting against virtual money like Bitcoin.

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Observations From The Margin

December 3, 2013
Observation Tower

Observation  (Photo credit: mooglet)

– How can William P.White the D.C. insurance commissioner get fired by the D.C. Mayor for telling the truth about Obamacare, while everyone who lied about Obamacare gets to keep their job.

– Politicians never cease to amaze me. John McCain called Ted Cruz attempt to repeal or defund Obamacare, “not rational”, and to attempt it during the Gov. shutdown was considered “a fool’s errand”. Six weeks later in an appearence on the Greta Van Susteren show McCain said Obamacare should be repealed. Most politicians live in a zero sum moment that they think can never change. McCain was acting on the polls at the time of Cruzes filibuster, while Cruz was trying to educate people about the problems concerning Obamacare, in an attempt to move public opinion toward repeal. Cruz succeeded with the help of the predictable debacle that the Obamacare roll out has become.When public opinion shifted, McCain found himself in a “new” zero sum moment. Seeing the parade of public opinion coming down the street, he grabbed the conductor’s baton and jumped in front of it in an attempt to look as if he was leading it. This is the reality of politics and politicians, and why I lothe it and them.

– The free market, not Government regulation, has allowed the production of the highest quality and quantity of healthcare possible. Over the years, Government intervention has worked to slow the progress of healthcare while driving up the cost, at the same time that new technological discoveries have worked to advance healthcare, and make it less expensive. We have no idea how advanced and less expensive healthcare would be if the free market would have been allowed to work unimpeded by Government regulations.

– Obamacare is the attempt by central planners to move healthcare toward a single payer system, aka socialized medicine. These central planners simply don’t like the results produced by individuals making voluntary decisions in a free market. They think their superior wisdom can produce better healthcare at an “affordable” price. Unfortunately for the planners Obamacare increases demand for healthcare, while at the same time constraining the supply of healthcare, which will result in less healthcare at higher prices. Their superior wisdom can’t veto the economic law of supply and demand.

– Politicians and bureaucrats can mandate that healthcare be provided to everyone, but if there is nobody to provide healthcare, what good is the mandate. They are promising you access to something that they don’t produce. Individuals produce healthcare, and if an individual decides the payment for his production isn’t enough, he will produce some other good or service for a payment he thinks is enough.

– How can the President, seemingly every week, get away with making executive orders that change Obamacare, which is the law of the land? Is it because the opposition party is pusillanimous. Tyrants become more bold when their power grabs are not challenged.

– Let’s see if I have this right. 1) Obamacare mandated that everyone purchase health insurance, even if they don’t want it. 2) If they already had a voluntary contract with an insurance provider, the Government arbitrarily nullified the mutually agreed upon contract, because it didn’t meet Obamacare’s arbitrary standards. 3) The President then decided that insurance companies reinstate the insurance plans that Obamacare mandates outlawed. 4) The insurance companies have said they can’t or won’t reinstate the policies that were outlawed under Obamacare. I guess being King is a lot easier in theory than it is in reality.

– Experts from Google and Oracle have been brought in as part of the “tech surge” to fix the problems with the healthcare.gov website. Why didn’t the “all-knowing” Government bureaucrats let these experts set up the website in the first place?

– The books Atlas Shrugged, Animal Farm, and 1984 were categorized as works of fiction when each was published. If they were published today they would be categorized as history books.

I got these cartoons from the burningplatform.com.

140590 600 Better on the Inside cartoons

140655 600 Obama Promises cartoons

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Must Reads For The Week 11/30/13

November 30, 2013
The pen is mightier than the sword...

The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)

If You Like Your Plan You Can Keep It: ( The Rap w/ Remy), by Remy and Meredith Bragg, at reason.com. A short rap video to start your day.

Watched Cops Are Polite Cops, by Ronald Bailey, at reason.com. Lets go to the replay official! Having small cameras attached to an officers glasses, hats, or uniforms is a good idea as these three stories,( read 1 here, 2 here and 3 here) show.

Hospital Holds Teen For 9 Months, Won’t Let Parents Take Her Home, by Kristin Tate, at benswann.com. If you think parents rights are being violated now, just wait until Obamacare is fully implemented.

Price Controls Don’t Work, And Team Obama Doesn’t Like Market Solutions That Save Lives, by Mark J. Perry, at aei-ideas.org. Here’s a quote from the article, “The Obama administration cannot accept a market approach to rationing a scarce resource like bone marrow, and insists on a government price control of $0.00 for a scarce, lifesaving resource.” Just wait until Obamacare is fully implemented.

Full List Of Obamacare Tax Hikes, by Nick Sorrentino, at townhall.com. Politicians can always claim they haven’t raised taxes if, 1)the tax hikes can be hidden in thousands of pages of legislation, and 2) the mainstream media won’t do their job of being a check on political power.

Pope Francis: Free Market Hater, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Understanding how free markets really work takes much deeper analysis than the shallow thinking enjoyed by utopian central planners, Marxists, and even well meaning Christians.

The Three Metro Areas In The US That Have Larger Economies Than Sweden, at econoimicpolicyjournal.com. Central banks are printing a portion of these GDP numbers. Since all central banks are counterfeiting at the same time, than the GDP differences between countries represent some sense of reality.

Do you believe this guy, David Stockman Fears “Panic” When The “Lunatic” Fed “Loses Control”, at zerohedge.com, or do you believe this guy.Greenspan- “Dow 16,000 Is Not A Bubble”, at zerohedge.com.

Our View: Ethanol Was Mistake Then, It Still Is One Now, at delewareonline.com. Ethanol mandates are,  a) An environmental boondoggle, b) A subsidy for farmers, c) Politicians buying votes, d) All of the above.

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Must Reads For The Week 11/23/13

November 23, 2013
The pen is mightier than the sword...

The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)

This first article and video is a must!

The War Against Achievement, by Thomas Sowell, at jewishworldreview.com. When individuals achieve at a higher level than you, are you envious and try to tear them down, or do you use their achievement as motivation of what is possible if you work hard? Watch this video about Richie Parker, the young man Thomas Sowell is talking about in his article.

Mother Charged $10 dollars After Lunch Of Pot Roast, Potatoes, Carrots, And An Orange Deemed “Unbalanced” By Daycare, by Liz Klimas, at theblaze.com. If you want to look where the road we’re traveling leads, look at countries who are farther down this road. Oh yeah I forgot, “this can’t happen here”.

The Obamacare Time Bomb, by Marc A. Thiessen, at economicpolicyjournal.com. In the words of the great F. A. Hayek, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

Census “Faked” 2012 Elections Jobs Report, by John Crudele, at nypost.com. Most of us knew the number was fudged when it came out.

I Can’t Call You Sugar, Cause Sugar Never Was So Sweet, by Angus, at mungowitzend.blogspot.com. This is what we mean when we talk about crony capitalism. In a free market, unhampered by Government regulations, businesses will succeed or fail based on their ability to sell a good or service at a price that covers the cost of production.

Nancy Pelosi Doesn’t Think She Said Anything Wrong About Keeping Health Plan, by Robert P. Murphy, at consultingbyrpm.com. My apology for wanting you to watch a video of Nancy Pelosi. I don’t know what is more amazing, watching Nancy try to spin her way out of her own pile of #%&*, or watching David Gregory try to act like a journalist asking tough questions.

The Treasury Federal Reserve Naked Tango, by Lawrence Kotlikoff, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Counterfeiting and money laundering are legal activities for Government, but not for us. Counterfeiting is theft whether it’s legal of illegal.

School Heaves Obama Lunch Menu, at ohiolibertycoalition.org. Students force Obama’s school lunch program to face economic reality. Read this post from a year ago titled, Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, Doesn’t Work As Planners Planned, at austrianaddict.com.

California Rejects Proposed One-Year Plan Extension, at zerohedge.com. The pesky free market won’t cooperate with the central planner and chief’s plans concerning Obamacare.

Guest Post: The 5 Economic “Big Lies” The Government Is Telling You, by Micheal Snyder, guest post on zerohedge.com. This post is so

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