Did you know?

Life is a bitch and then you wake up, then it is really ugly and then you wake up again and you find it quite beautiful and then you die and get confirmation about the beautiful part.

Gary on the FED

See:  http://www.garynorth.com/public/5389.cfm

He writes: “The timing was created by Alan Greenspan, whose policies created the bubbles, followed by Ben Bernanke, who had no clue that his stabilization of the monetary base in 2006 and 2007 would create a near-collapse of the banking system.”

MY COMMENTS: No clue?  Are you kidding me?  For all of Gary’s intelligence his repitition of this claim floors me every time.  My big beef with Lew’s writers – they seem to throw logic out the window when it comes to this one issue.

Folks – Bernanke and crew know exactly what they are doing.  Make no mistake.

I Said END THE FED

 

From Sir Libertas

Light and liberty are intertwined.

Bloomberg has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (the big one) concerning the bank’s refusal to furnish the names of the institutions who received bailout money requested by Bloomberg in its FOIA request, which resulted in . . . 

. . . the Judge demanding that the Fed disclose the borrowers of the $2 Trillion in loans made. The Fed asked Judge Preska to delay enforcement of the decision until an appeals court can act on the central bank’s yet-to-be-filed appeal. Yvonne Mizusawa, the Fed’s senior counsel, said financial institutions as well as the central bank will suffer irreparable damage if loan-program details are disclosed publicly.

You know… If Ron Paul’s bill [H.R. 1207] to audit the Fed Reserve would get the support it needs and is worthy of, then we wouldn’t have to go through all this legal stuff… I just don’t see how a cartel that was created in 1913 as supposedly a central bank, and independent corporation, can’t be audited… They make decisions that affect you, me and the man down the street…

http://www.kitcocasey.com/articles/2938/daily-pfennig-8-27-09:-the-boy-who-cried-wolf?-not!-/

The Fed’s board of governors asked Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska to delay enforcement of her Aug. 24 decision that the identities of borrowers in 11 lending programs must be made public by Aug. 31. The central bank wants Preska to stay her order until the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York can hear the case. . . . The central bank didn’t say when it would file its appeal. Fed lawyer Kit Wheatley told Preska in a conference call today that she did not know how long it would take for the Fed board to search the New York Fed for records. “We really don’t know what’s in New York,” Wheatley said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aAOhgVw78e3U

The moral of this story is that secrecy is vital to when you are trying to run a successful Ponzi scheme on 300 million Americans.  Secrecy requires diligence on all fronts.  Speaking of which . . . there should not be even a smidgen of doubt in anyone’s mind now that Mr. Obama is entirely beholden to those who have so thoroughly and quickly ravaged the American economy.  You know the ones I’m talking about: Goldman Sachs, the central bankers, etc.  Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, LBJ—they were all equally beholden to their corporate masters.  So it should be of no surprise that, out of all of the people on the planet to choose from, Obama has nominated Ben Bernanke to a second term as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank.  (Because you certainly would not want to let that kind of genius get away.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20090825/pl_bloomberg/aymaifp3wdns_1

Humor savers for another black Monday

Are you a fluzie?

 

From Sir Libertas (formerly known as Anonymous from the North)

The British government is imitating art (“1984″) and installing cameras in people’s homes. Now it seems that our government is using a Hollywood movie as an instructional video. Check out the scene in V for Vendetta from 1h30m to 1h31m and compare it to the government-fed propaganda that passes for news in our American Pravda press. [DVD tip: V for Vendetta is a movie that you really should consider watching. (With the subtitles on.)]

There are stories in the press about Army hiring ads for “internment” specialists. (That’s a little strange.)
There are stories in the press about barbwired camps springing up all over the U.S. (That a little disconcerting.)
There are stories in the press about the military requesting 400,000 soldiers to patrol American streets. (WTF?) (No, seriously, WTF?)

Where is all of this leading? I don’t know. But the stories below might be a hint.

Swine+avian+??? flu “vaccine” makers to make $50,000,000,000 profit—Guinea pigs needed

GlaxoSmithKline is preparing to sell billions worth of swine flu drugs this year. Their swine flu vaccine will be available by September, and international governments are already stockpiling large supplies of GSK’s anti-viral treatment Relenza. Worldwide sales from the two drugs are expected to be enormous, but the company rejected claims it was exploiting the pandemic. According to recent media reports, some 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine are slated to be delivered to the U.S. by fall; enough doses to vaccinate a large portion of the U.S. population. The U.K. government has placed advance orders for 60 million doses. And according to Business Week, wealthier countries like the U.S. and the U.K. will pay just under $10 per dose, while developing countries would pay less. If these facts hold true, Big Pharma stands to gain up to $49 billion a year on the swine flu vaccine alone. Unfortunately, many people will not realize that when they line up for this vaccine, they are in fact accepting their role as TEST SUBJECTS. They are likely NOT receiving a drug that has any proof of being safe. The last swine flu vaccination campaign that took place in 1976 led to thousands of lawsuits. Damage claims totaled $1.3 billion. The vaccine claimed 25 lives and hundreds of previously healthy young adults were crippled from Guillain-Barré Syndrome. The swine flu itself claimed ONE life. This time around, the U.S. government has taken steps to ensure this will not happen again. The financial liability, I mean. Vaccine makers and federal officials have been rendered immune from lawsuits. Should anything go wrong with this current vaccine they will not have to pay a single cent to anyone.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18824.cfm

Corporatism versus human beings
These big pharmaceutical companies are already making a killing peddling these dangerous cocktails. That is why they’re spending tens of millions of dollars buying the favors of Congress. [V for Vendetta, 1h32m30s to 1h35m] Buying protection against lawsuits after millions have become sick and now have irreversible damage to their vital organs. The incestuous relationship between the Federal Death Administration (FDA), Congress and the big pharma houses is beyond outrageous. A RICO should be filed against all of them. This interview with a top epidemiologist sums it all up – it’s all about money. ‘A Whole Industry Is Waiting For A Pandemic’
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,637119,00.html

Despite Pravda’s deceptions, the swine+avian+??? flu is not similar to the 1918-19 influenza

[N]umerous doctors and scientists suspect that [today’s] swine flu virus was cultured in a laboratory. A mainstream Australian virologist, Adrian Gibbs – who was one of the first to analyze the genetic properties of the 2009 swine flu – believes that scientists accidentally created the H1N1 virus while producing vaccines. [According to] Dr. John Carlo, Dallas Co. Medical Director, “This strain of swine influenza that’s been cultured in a laboratory is something that’s not been seen anywhere actually in the United States and the world, so this is actually a new strain of influenza that’s been identified.” Because of this, the 2009 swine flu virus – which has yet to be detected in any animals – has a rather suspicious pedigree.

The media has never been in the habit of reporting the cases of people who, for no known reason, die of the flu. Out of the 35,000 Americans who die each year from flu-related illnesses, some are bound to be relatively young and healthy. It happens. This year, however, their stories are front-page news.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/bosworth1.1.1.html

Doctors and nurses don’t want to be vaccinated

Up to half of [British] family doctors do not want to be vaccinated against swine flu.
GPs will be first in the line for the jabs when they become available but many will decline, even though they will be offering the vaccine to their patients.
More than two thirds of those who will turn the jab down believe it has not been tested enough. Most also believe the flu has turned out to be so mild in the vast majority of cases that the vaccine is not needed.
A week ago, a poll of nurses showed that a third would turn down the opportunity of being vaccinated against swine flu.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208716/Half-GPs-refuse-swine-flu-vaccine-testing-fears.html

sTEROIDAL gOVERNEMTN n pERSONLAITY cULTz

MY COMMENTS:  This might be proof that television can MAKE you sick.  We arleady know it can make you stupid.  I hardly even watch it and I still can’t spell!

Stimulate Your Thinking

Economic thinking that is …

Micro-Stimulous

by Joshua Katz

by Joshua Katz
Recently by Joshua Katz: The State and Piracy

This morning, I attended orientation at the university where I will study and teach for the next few years. The orientation organizer mentioned, in an offhand way, that in previous years, attendees had been provided with snacks, coffee, and lunch, but that due to budget difficulties, no food would be provided today. Although my fellow attendees may not have been happy about this (all else being equal, people prefer to be given things), they all nodded understandingly, and murmured statements about the economy. All expressed bafflement at the economic situation, apparently having been too immersed in their studies to notice Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, or Tom Woods warning them of the coming collapse. Many made statements indicating their beliefs that “things were turning around.” Some, I’m sure, likely believed that “things were turning around” due to Bush/Obama economic policies, although I’m sure that absolutely none would phrase their belief that way. However, on reflection, it occurred to me that, if it makes sense to you that a university suffering a budget crunch would decide not to provide a few hundred meals and snacks, then you absolutely cannot believe in stimulus economics without believing in a contradiction. Please, let me explain.

Imagine that you are a university administrator planning an orientation event. Having been informed that the university needs to cut costs, you ask your staff “what do you think about cutting meals?” All nod, except the student intern. This intern, who happens to be an economics student, provides the following argument:

“Who needs to cut costs, exactly? Certainly not just us – rather, the entire university needs to cut costs. But it would be just as good – better even – to instead increase revenue. What really matters is not costs as an absolute, or revenue as an absolute, but profit, which is revenue minus costs. Very well – so we need to analyze this decision in terms of the university as a whole. Now, in past years, where have we bought meals from?”

At this point, deciding to humor the intern, you inform him that meals have been purchased from campus dining services.

Continuing his argument, the student proceeds:

“Let’s look at the meal purchasing transaction, then. Step one is we pay, say, $5,000 to dining services. As far as the university is concerned, there’s no loss here – we transferred $5,000 from one department to another, so no cost has been incurred. Step two is dining services sends up $5,000 worth of food. Now, again, from the standpoint of the university, items have been transferred from one department to another, and no cost has been incurred. But, in fact, it is incomplete to simply say that things are no worse than they were before the transaction took place – things are better! Why, notice that dining services purchases their supplies from other campus vendors, namely, the campus dairy and the campus farms, and that dining services has a higher marginal propensity to spend than we do – so we’ve stimulated the campus economy. In fact, we should buy more food than last year, and if we buy enough, we’ll single-handedly solve the entire budget problem!”

At this point, we can assume, everyone in the room with a lick of sense – especially those who are not burdened by a college education – will begin to laugh hysterically. The more erudite will point out the obvious problem – the food will be eaten, and while the school will have the same amount of money floating around, it will have fewer assets. It will either have to spend money to replace those assets, or simple have fewer on hand. In any case, the point is obvious – you can’t have your cake after you’ve eaten it. It turns out, then, that you cannot consume your way to prosperity.

Again, no one at all, except an overly enamored economics student, would think this argument makes sense. The student will, hopefully, sneak out the room, red-faced but having learned a lesson in just how much economic sense he has lost through his education. Furthermore, adding more businesses to the university makes the argument no more convincing. The student already added a third link the chain, as it were, moving the loss of assets down to the university dairy and farms. We could add a fourth link, presuming that the university also maintains power plants, oil pumps, and facilities to make its own fertilizer. The argument will remain implausible.

Let us, then, add the entire US economy, one item at a time, to the university. In our minds, we let it grow to include, as separate departments, each business and household in the country. Presumably, at any stage in the process short of having added the entire economy, we can bring the intern back into the room, have him present his (now much longer) argument, and verify that, indeed, he is still laughed at. It follows immediately, then, that anyone laughing at the intern’s argument should laugh just as hard at any politician proposing a “stimulus package” or a “cash for clunkers” or any other such ludicrous program.

 One might object, though, that I have only brought the intern in at a stage prior to the complete incorporation of the US economy into the university – might not something change once the entire economy is added that makes the argument correct? In other words, couldn’t something happen at that particular stage that was not predicted by the previous stages? Notice, though, that the same can be said of any stimulus package that a politician suggests – regardless of what emanates from Washington, I plan to continue to increase my savings and cut my spending. Thus, any stimulus plan will necessarily not include my household in the chain, and therefore, if some property did come about whereby a stimulus package could work for the whole country, but not any proper subset, nonetheless, no stimulus package would work. (Don’t make the mistake, of course, of presuming that I think such a quality exists; I’m simply arguing that even if it did, it wouldn’t help the stimulus case.)

My point is not, of course, that stimulus packages don’t work – we all know that. My point is not to ignore all the specific damage they do, as can be seen on a business cycle analysis. My point is only that, not only do they not work, but every person who votes for a politician who proposes such packages, or cheers such packages, or thinks that such a package has “pulled our economy out the mess” (they have no idea what suffering we’re in for in the near future) knows, in a smaller context, how ludicrous such an idea is. Every Obama voter would have laughed at the intern’s argument, yet somehow they think that, by adding enough links to the chain, such an argument can be made plausible. All that is left to convince them, then, is that the facts do not depend on the length of the chain.

 

August 28, 2009

Joshua Katz, NREMT-P [send him mail], is the Legislative Director and Secretary of the Libertarian Party of Connecticut. A graduate student and college instructor, his areas of interest include mathematics, logic, non-linear dynamics, philosophy of mind, and the use of the synthetic a priori.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

MY COMMENTS: If he plans on cutting his costs and increasing his savings I hope his savings are not in US dollars.  One of the wonderful outcomes of all of this will be the demise and devaluation of the US dollar. If one is to do any savings, they would be much better off exchanging those dollars for gold and/or silver bullion, like junk silver and then planning on storing it away – not to be used or sold unless it is indeed an emergency. 

Given current circumstances, this has got to be one of the cheapest and most promising insurance programs still available in our crumbling and crippled economy. 

Also note that what Joshua plans on doing actually delays the onset of hyperinflation – hoarding of US dollars buys us time. 

Just remember, we don’t get to take our dollars, our silver or our gold with us when we go.  It stays here.  We get to take other “things” with us and that is a better thing to remember as all of this “economic/wordly” stuff plays out.

McClintock and planned destruction

California as a warning for America

Tom McClintock

 
 
 
Congressman Tom McClintock offered remarks in Washington , D.C. , on Friday to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Pacific Research Institute that clearly illustrate why California is facing such a large fiscal mess. His beginning joke is so funny because it is so true:
 
“I know that everybody likes to poke fun at California – but I can tell you right now that despite all of its problems, California remains one of the best places in the world to build a successful small business. All you have to do is start with a successful large business.”
 
Here is the rest of the speech:
 
Laugh if you will, but let me remind you that when these policies finish wrecking California, there are still 49 other states we can all move to –  and yours is one of them.
 
I should also warn you of the strange sense of déjà-vu that I have every day on the House floor as I watch the same folly and blunders that wrecked California now being passed with reckless abandon in this Congress.
 
We passed a “Cash-for-Clunkers” bill the other day – we did that years ago in California .
 
Doubling the entire debt every five years?  Been there.
 
Increasing spending at unsustainable rates?  Done that.
 
Save-the-Planet-Carbon-Dioxide restrictions?  Got the T-Shirt.
 
To understand how these policies can utterly destroy an economy and bankrupt a government, you have to remember the Golden State in its Golden Age.
 
A generation ago, California spent about half what it does today AFTER adjusting for both inflation and population growth.
 
And yet, we had the finest highway system in the world and the finest public school system in the country.   California offered a FREE university education to every Californian who wanted one.  We produced water and electricity so cheaply that many communities didn’t bother to measure the stuff.  Our unemployment rate consistently ran well below the national rate and its diversified economy was nearly recession-proof.
 
One thing – and one thing only – has changed in those years: public policy.  The political Left gradually gained dominance over California ’s government and has imposed a disastrous agenda of radical and retrograde policies that have destroyed the quality of life that Californians once took for granted.
 
The Census Bureau reports that in the last two years 2/3 of a million more people have moved out of California than have moved into it.  Many are leaving for the garden spots of Nevada , Arizona and Texas . Think about that.  California is blessed with the most equitable climate in the entire Western Hemisphere; it has the most bountiful resources anywhere in the continental United States; it is poised on the Pacific Rim in a position to dominate world trade for the next century, and yet people are finding a better place to live and work and raise their families in the middle of the Nevada and Arizona and Texas deserts.
 
I submit to you that no conceivable act of God could wreak such devastation as to turn California into a less desirable place to live than the middle of the Nevada Nuclear Test Range .  Only Acts of Government can do that.  And they have.
 
You can trace the collapse of California’s economy to several critical events: the rise of environmental Ludditism beginning in 1974; the abandonment of constitutional checks and balances that once constrained spending and borrowing; and the rise of rule by public employee unions .  There are other factors as well: litigation, taxation, illegal immigration – but for the sake of time let me concentrate on the big three.
 
The first was the rise of environmental Ludditism with the election of a radical new-age leftist named Jerry Brown as governor of the state – an election that also produced overwhelming liberal majorities in both legislative houses.
 
Like Obama today, Brown lost little time in pursuing his vision of California – an incoherent combination of pastoral simplicity, European socialism and centralized planning.  At the center of this world view was a backward ideology that he called his “era of limits” – the naïve notion that public works were growth inducing and polluting and that stopping the expansion of infrastructure somehow excused government from meeting the needs of an expanding population. Conservation replaced abundance as the chief aim of California ’s public works, and public policy was redirected to developing irresistible incentives for the population to concentrate in dense urban cores rather than to settle in suburban communities. Brown infused his vision into every aspect of public policy, and it is a testament to his thoroughness and tenacity that its basic tenets have dominated the direction of California through both Republican and Democratic administrations.
 
He cancelled the state’s highway construction program, abandoning many routes in mid-construction.  He cancelled long-planned water projects, conveyance facilities and dams.  He established the California Energy Commission that blocked approval of any significant new generating capacity.  He enacted volumes of environmental regulations that created severe impediments to home and commercial construction, empowering an incipient no-growth movement that began on the most extreme fringe of the environmental cause and quickly spread. This movement reached its zenith with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the enactment of AB 32 and companion legislation in 2006.  This measure gives virtually unchecked authority to the California Air Resources Board to force Draconian reductions in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020.
 
This has dire implications to entire segments of California ’s economy: agriculture, baking, distilling, cargo and passenger transportation, cement production, manufacturing, construction and energy production, to name a few.
 
We, too, were promised an explosion of “green jobs,” but exactly the opposite has happened.
 
Up until that bill took effect, California ’s unemployment numbers tracked very closely with the national unemployment rate.  But since then, California ’s unemployment rate began a steady upward divergence from the national jobless figures.  Today, California ’s unemployment rate is more than two points above the national rate, and at its highest point since 1941.
 
The second problem is structural: the collapse of the checks and balances and other constitutional and traditional constraints on government spending and borrowing.
 
Let me mention a few of them.
 
The State Supreme Court decision in Serrano v. Priest severed the use of local revenue for local schools and invited the state take-over of public education.  AB 8 of 1979 – the legislature’s response to Proposition 13 – essentially did the same thing to local governments generally.
 
This means that vast bureaucracies have grown up over the service delivery level, wasting more and more resources while hamstringing teachers in their classrooms, wardens in their prisons and city councils in their towns.
 
Next, constitutional constraints on fiscal excesses began to fall.  In 1983, Gov. George Deukmejian approved legislation to remove the governor’s ability to make mid-year budget corrections without having to return to the legislature. The loss of this provision exposed the state to chronic deficit spending by removing any ability of the governor to rapidly respond to changing economic conditions. In 1989, Deukmejian sponsored Proposition 111 that destroyed the Gann Spending Limit that had held increases in state spending to inflation and population growth.  If that limit had remained intact, California would be enjoying a budget surplus today.
 
The disastrous tax increases by Pete Wilson in
1991 and Arnold Schwarzenegger this year were made possible by this tragic blunder. Finally, we’ve watched the constitutional budget process that had produced relatively punctual and relatively balanced budgets for nearly 150 years collapse in favor of an extra-constitutional abomination called the big five.
 
That new process, that began under Pete Wilson and has culminated under Arnold Schwarzenegger  bypasses the entire legislative deliberative process in favor of an annual deal struck between the governor and legislative leaders behind closed doors and handed to the legislature as a fait accompli.
 
This short-circuits the separation of powers that is designed to discipline fiscal excess and it literally bargains away the line-item veto authority of the governor.  It is a process that allows legislative leaders to extract concessions from the executive that would not be possible if the separation of powers were maintained. With the checks against excessive spending broken down, borrowing became the preferred method of public finance.  The Constitutional requirement that all taxpayer-supported debt be approved by voters began to erode in the 1930’s, when a depression-era Supreme Court decision allowed the state to run a temporary deficit in the event of an economic down-turn – as long as the shortfall was addressed in the following fiscal year.  This practice was narrowly construed until the Wilson administration began using it to justify spreading out a single year’s budget deficit over several years.
 
During the 1980’s, Gov. Deukmejian began employing a legal fiction called a “lease revenue bond,” to circumvent constitutionally required voter approval.
 
Although Proposition 13 still protects property owners from unsustainable increases in their property taxes, most of the other fiscal constraints are now gone, and California has entered a period of unprecedented public debt to finance an unprecedented expansion of state government.
 
The third factor that also can be traced back to the 1970’s was the radical transformation that took place in the nature and power of the state’s public employee unions.  Until that time, state law prohibited public employee strikes against the public and prohibited collective bargaining or closed shops.
 
During the Jerry Brown era, a series of collective bargaining acts handed to public sector unions all the rights and powers of private sector unions – but without any of the natural constraints on private sector unions.  The unions soon brought these newly-won powers to bear to elect hand-picked officials to state and local office.
 
Today, political expenditures by public employee unions exceed all other special interest groups, while they hold compliant majorities in the state legislature and most local agencies.
 
The result has been radically escalating personnel costs and radically deteriorating performance.
 
The impact on governmental services has been devastating.  Despite exploding budgets, service delivery is collapsing.  Firing incompetent teachers has become a virtual impossibility, adding to the deterioration of educational quality.  Essential services can no longer be performed because labor costs have made it impossible to sustain those services.
 
Today, California is like the shopkeeper who leased out too much space, ordered too much inventory, hired too many people and paid them too much.  Every month the shopkeeper covers his shortfalls with borrowing and bookkeeping tricks.  Ultimately, he will reach a tipping point where anything he does makes his situation worse.  Borrowing costs are eating him alive and he’s running out of credit.  Raising prices causes his sales to decline.  And there’s only so much discretionary spending he can cut.
 
That’s the state’s predicament in a nutshell.  California ’s borrowing costs now exceed the budget of the entire University of California and it is increasingly likely that it will fail to find lenders when it must borrow billions to pay its bills at the end of this month. Ignoring dire warnings, Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislators from both parties earlier this year imposed the biggest state tax increase in American history.
 
And I can assure you that the Laffer curve is alive and well.  In the first two months after the tax increase took effect, state revenues have plunged 33 percent.
 
Although there are many obsolete, duplicative or low priority programs and expenditures that the state can – and should – do without, there aren’t enough of them to come anywhere close to closing California ’s deficit.
 
Sadly, California has reached the terminal stage of a bureaucratic state, where government has become so large and so tangled that it can no longer perform even basic functions.
 
Fortunately, we have a model that we know works.  A generation ago, it produced a high quality of public service at a much lower cost.  It maximized management flexibility and it required accountability at the service delivery level.  It recognized that only when commerce and enterprise flourish can we finance the basic responsibilities of government.
 
Restoring this efficiency will require a governor and a legislature with the political will to wrestle control from the public employee unions, dismantle the enormous bureaucracies that have grown up over the service delivery level, decentralize administration and decision making, contract out services that the private sector can provide more efficiently, rescind the recent tax increases that are costing the state money and roll back the regulatory obstacles to productive enterprise.
 
Alas, we don’t have such leaders and even if we did, the systemic reorganization of the state government can’t be accomplished overnight.  Restructuring the public schools would take at least a year; prisons at least two; and health and welfare three to five years before serious savings could be realized.
 
This brings us to the fine point of the matter.  What Churchill called history’s “terrible, chilling words” are about to be pronounced on California ’s failed leadership: “too late.”
 
A federal loan guarantee or bailout may be the only way to buy time for the restructuring of California ’s bureaucracies to take effect, but the discussion remains academic until and unless the state actually adopts the replacement structures, unburdens its shrinking productive sector and presents a credible plan to redeem the state’s crushing debt and looming obligations.
 
Without these actions, federal intervention will only make California ’s problems worse by postponing reform, continuing unsustainable spending and piling up still more debt.
 
In short, if California won’t help itself, the federal government cannot, should not and must not.
 
And before anyone gets too smug at California ’s agony, remember this: Congress is now enacting the same policies at the national level that have caused the collapse of California .  So whistle past this cemetery if you must, but remember the medieval epitaph:  ”Remember man as you walk by, as you are now so once was I; as I am now so you will be.” The good news is there is still time for the nation to avoid California ’s fate.  If anything, the collapse of California can at least serve as a morality play for the rest of the nation – unfortunately in the form of a Greek tragedy.

MY COMMENTS: 

It is called planned destruction – who funds the enviros?  The gang that took over Sacto?  Who runs the likes of Schwarzenegger?

Just like the monetary system and the economy. The sources of money and control know EXACTLY what they are doing. Out of chaos comes order; the New World Order.

You can’t implement the NWO onto the backs of a vibrant, healthy, well fed, armed and knowledgeable population – that population must first NEED what you are offering.

Connect the dots.  The picture becomes more clear. You don’t need a tin foil hat, but it keeps the TV watchers smug and entertained!

Storage and Faith

This is posted to www.blankityblank.biz too.

Don’t tell anyone that is also posted here, okay?

Last night I jumped from the low road to the high road.  We started and finished the installation of a refrigeration unit in an old 24’ insulated shipping container that was once used on a Matson ship.  This container had all the gear on it to be used as a freezer or a refrigerated container, but it was old and operates on 3 phase instead of single phase.  It could’ve been restored, but the cost would’ve been prohibitive. I bought it back in ’99 for general storage and it is about 100’ from the house and near our (old) new red barn. It leaks a bit, but is insulated very well.  It’s painted like the red barn and I’ve always liked it.  I plan to put a raised roof on it.

So I shopped and shopped for the reefer unit and the right installers and, in hindsight, did not do sufficient research, but either got lucky (unlikely) or angels came to the rescue (very likely).  I found John Shanks and his friend from Benicia, Bob on a referral while searching for someone else I had found on craigslist, but then had lost his contact information.  John and Bob got me up and running with 16,000 Btu R22 system in an 11 hour day and for a song. 

To say I am a happy camper today would be an understatement.

John called me the day before and during our conversation, the phone went dead. He called me back and reported that he had dropped his blackberry cell phone directly into his cup of coffee.  After that, things went down hill and by the end of the morning on the day it was installed I had a severe case of buyer’s remorse and we hadn’t even started.

One of my many character flaws revealed itself in all its glory and it appears that in some areas I am indeed a slow learner. 

With my history as a Chief Engineer on research vessels I dealt with tight schedules and supervising outside contractors for work on the ships and I conditioned myself to judge based on communications at the outset.  This worked well in almost all circumstances.  Basically, if someone told me they were going to do something and did it or called to update me if they couldn’t that meant a green light in my dealings with them.  If a contractor passed this first test then we moved to the next one.  

In this case, John had told me that he had some things to wrap up, that he would call me back and if all was well would start the next day.  He never called me back and I spent the entire evening and following morning trying to contact him with no luck whatsoever.  I took the day off as a vacation day so I could be at home for the installation so I called in the evening and called in the morning and waited until 9 AM. I finally gave up and went to work thinking it was a bust.

Part of my angst had to do with my back up plans that I had started that morning and then coming to the realization that John had quoted me a price that was ridiculously low.  I was told that this quoted amount was either not possible or was evidence that I would end up with a system that would not do the job or be incorrect for the application. This made me very nervous and I was kicking myself for jumping in with what appeared to be a fly-by-nighter.  I was relieved that he didn’t show up and resigned myself to a method of potato storage that was workable, but not ideal. 

Then Jennifer called me at work. She had just got home and John and Bob were in the middle of the installation.  She questioned them as best she could and reported back to me and then I felt like I was in a real fix.  So I got myself back in the van and headed home, expecting the worse.

Within five minutes of arriving I knew I was in good hands.  I am no refrigeration expert (if I was, I would’ve done the work myself), but I did have some training, built a system for an aquarium years ago and I am even better at sizing up contractors.  I rattled through a list of questions and there was no BS.  The equipment looked good and everything checked out.  These guys were A-1 and that became evident almost immediately. 

John Shanks, I discovered, is not a cell phone guy.  He is old school and just remembered from our conversation that my goal was to have the system in and running in one day.  He didn’t even know how to check for messages on his new replacement cell phone.  There may be an argument that a licensed refrigeration contractor should have his phone thing down pat, but I know old school and when push comes to shove, old school trumps the techno-savvy types in most circumstances. So since he knew what I wanted, he made that happen and calling me back wasn’t even on his radar screen.  Given the outcome and the price, he is forgiven tenfold.

By 9:30 PM I was holding the flashlight for Bob so he could button up a few last things on the evaporator inside the container, the unit was running and I was freezing my ass off.  It works like a champ.

No doubt things could’ve gone differently.  But what’s my problem? Do I have one? Sometimes I think it might be lack of Faith.  What do you think?

I think it is pretty cool that there is more to farming than the weather, marketing, dirt, gophers and potatoes.

 Denny – the Head Potato Head

Census Sense

Again – from Anonymous from the North …

Theme: Act as if privacy matters

Michael Jackson’s medical records

ABC News reports [http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/MichaelJackson/story?id=8016880&page=1] that in the joint LAPD-DEA probe of Michael Jackson’s death, the California Department of “Justice” has “offered technical support in terms of its powerful searchable database of patient information that includes drugs, doses, the doctors that administered them and the patients that received them.”

Does anybody else remember the earnest and repeated assurances from advocates of various government-operated health care programs — ObamaCare among them — that those concerned about invasions of patient confidentiality and potential abuse of personal health information have nothing to worry about?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/32831.html

U.S. Census Bureau records
As history has shown, the concerns about invasions of confidentiality and potential abuse of personal information apply just as much to the U.S. Census Bureau records as they do to medical records.

In what has been called a telemarketer’s dream, the federal government scams millions of people into filing, without any questions, federal census forms. (And these people do it for free.) Scads of highly personal information are handed to complete strangers. This information is then input into databases on the world’s most powerful computers, and cross-referenced with every other personal information database the government can secure. George Orwell would be proud of his prescience. There are already cameras on millions of street corners. The only thing missing seems to be cameras inside of people’s homes. [Can you guess what my next e-mail will be about?]

But we are not obliged to assume the intelligence of lemmings. We can act as if humans have the most powerful brain in the animal kingdom.

The federal government has a constitutional duty to execute a census of American citizens every ten years. Americans on the other hand have absolutely no constitutional duty (or need) to participate in the census.

As this article [http://www.lewrockwell.com/barnett/barnett12.1.html] correctly points out, the federal constitution demands [see Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 (i.e., 1.2.3)] a head count (“enumeration”) of American citizens every decade. It does NOT authorize anything else, such as the collection of personal information (e.g., one’s name).

There are only three constitutional purposes for this head count. All of them pertain to “apportionment”, whereby each State’s proportion of the overall population of the United States is used to determine each State’s proper
1) number of representatives in the House of Representatives [1.2.3],
2) number of electors in the electoral college [2.1.2], and
3) share of payments of the overall amount of federal non-excise (“direct”/income) taxes owed [1.9.4] to the federal government.

Again, there is no other authorized (i.e., lawful) purpose for the census.

The people who wrote and/or ratified the Constitution were not interested in anyone’s personal life. To complete its constitutional duties, the government does not need to know
- How many toilets are in your house,
- Whether or not you inflicted a slave (“taxpayer”) identification number upon your children (and shame on you if you did!), or
- Anything else about you or your family.

The government may only execute a head count, on a State-by-State basis, for the three purposes listed above. Today’s census forms are nothing more than data-mining. If they were mandatory they would be unconstitutional. No one has ever been indicted for not filling out a census form. They are voluntary. Do not volunteer.

When a Census Bureau worker come a-knockin’ you might consider:
a. Divulging no information whatsoever,
b. Demanding the Census Bureau worker’s personal information,
c. Demanding his/her supervisor’s name and telephone number,
d. Telling them you are not interested in participating,
e. Telling them to never return, and
f. Shutting the door.

DON’T FILL OUT CENSUS FORMS.

AND AN UDATE -

In June, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reported

[U.S. Representative from Minnesota] Michele Bachmann, citing concerns about government intrusiveness, says she won’t fully fill out the U.S. Census form next year, even though that’s a violation of federal law.

“I’m saying, for myself and my family, our comfort level is we will comply with the Constitution Article I Section II,” Bachmann told a Fox News interviewer. “We will give the number of people in our home, and that’s where we’re going to draw the line.”

[T]he Census Bureau notes that it is not a prosecuting agency and that refusing to answer its questions is not likely to result in a fine.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/49104281.html

Further evidence of Congresswoman Bachmann’s wisdom is shown by her open-mindedness to the ideas of Congressman Ron Paul. Here’s the breaking news:

Rep. Michele Bachmann announced that she will have Rep. Ron Paul as her guest for a September town hall forum in St. Cloud.

“I’ll be doing another town hall up in the St. Cloud area in September and we’ll do that on monetary policy. Ron Paul is going to come in and we are going to host something on monetary policy,” Bachmann said.

Bachmann is a convert to the Ron Paul movement, sometimes attending the congressman’s weekly lunches.

http://minnesotaindependent.com/42610/bachmann-to-host-town-hall-with-rep-ron-paul

Bachmann too is now asking tough questions of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner when he visits Capitol Hill [http://minnesotaindependent.com/34032/ron-paul-michele-bachmann]

“People today are clamoring for transparency,” said Paul, “and there is more awareness of the Federal Reserve.

Apparently, even federal courts are starting to agree with Dr. Paul.  Yesterday, Reuters reported the following:

A federal judge on Monday ruled against an effort by the U.S. Federal Reserve to block disclosure of companies that participated in and securities covered by a series of emergency funding programs as the global credit crisis began to intensify.  In a 47-page opinion, Chief District Judge Loretta Preska of the federal court in Manhattan said the central bank failed to show that disclosure would cause borrowers in the Federal Reserve System to suffer “imminent competitive harm,” by stigmatizing them for using Fed lending programs. . . Preska concluded the Fed “improperly withheld agency records in response to a FOIA request by conducting an inadequate search,” she wrote.

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE57O03P20090825

 Where did all that money go?  And how exactly is all that Census data used?

 

MY COMMENTS:  We had one at our place about 2 months ago doing some type of preliminary work.  She was in a beat-up car and had German accent; seemed very bookish – I think she was trying to verify our address.  I was very reserved and said little to nothing, thinking that it could go sideways if I had told her to get off of our property.

Last one that came for the 2005 or whatever was told that “we” don’t cooperate and I shut the door.  I should’ve been more polite, but that is not my forte’.

They seem to be women.  Guess they get treated better.  I think the advice given above is good advice if you can do it with a polite demeanor, otherwise just tell them how many people live there and shut the door or tell them that’s all they need to know and get on with your day.

Here’s an interesting sign http://www.narlo.org/images/sign.jpg

Why should you be polite?  Other than the obvious reasons – most of these people who work for the census don’t know any better.  They are like a lot of us – we don’t know the Constitution, we don’t know history and we have a hard time connecting the dots and seeing where one bit of innocuous nonsense can lead to something much worse.  Rather than trying to explain to them what they need to know (which is what I am always trying to do) just send them on their way.  The unfortunate fact is that most people will not question their worldview until it is too late.