Blog
Time for an axiom: Big Government is Bad.
Or, put another way, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Or, maybe another one: big government is the last, best refuge of scoundrels.
Case in point, the three taverns in Philadelphia busted recently by cops in armed, simultaneous raids.
Were the cops after narcotics? How about organized crime? Maybe terrorists? Nope, none of these. In fact, the bars raided by the Keystone State's best were guilty of selling beer (gasp!).
As recounted by Philly.com, "more than a dozen armed State Police officers conducted simultaneous raids last week on three popular Philadelphia bars known for their wide beer selections. The cops confiscated hundreds of bottles of expensive ales and lagers, now in State Police custody at an undisclosed location." Does that mean they are in Cheney's bunker? Were the beers subject to a Keystone Kops version of extraordinary rendition?
At last we have incontrovertible proof that global warming is indeed dangerous. In Buenos Aires, the Latin American Herald Tribune reports that "a 7-month-old baby survived alone for three days with a bullet wound in its chest beside the bodies of its parents and brother, who died in an apparent suicide pact brought on by the couple's terror of global warming." According to reports out of Argentina, the bodies were found after neighbors smelled a strong odor emanating from the couple's house. When police entered they found "the lifeless bodies of the couple, each shot in the chest, and their 2-year-old son, who had been shot in the back."
Fortunately, in another room, police found the 7-month-old baby still alive, but covered in blood from a bullet wound in the chest.
The reason for the tragic and disturbing shooting was found by police in a letter left on the table. According to reports, the couple was worried "about global warming" and also noted that they were angry about what they perceived to be "the government's lack of interest in the matter."
This story along with much else about the global warming fraud should make everyone outraged. Innocent children have now been murdered and maimed, by their parents, because of the planetary delusion that an unprecedented climate catastrophe is about to destroy Gaia.
The good news on the economy this month, according to news reports, is the modest level of inflation. On this matter, CNN reported that consumer prices "rose 2.6% during the past twelve months, according to a report from the Labor Department." But the real headlining statistic was "core CPI," watched closely CNN says, "because it strips out volatile food and energy prices." Core CPI was up overall for the past year by 1.6 percent, but in a surprise for the month of January, it fell 0.1 percent. That's cause for celebration, apparently. At least it was cause for one major paper, The Washington Post, to put the stat in its own headline, with Post staff writer Frank Ahrens penning a story pointing out that the drop was the first since 1982.
It's not time to celebrate yet, though. The fact is, any inflation is too much inflation. And in the U.S., there is good reason to think there is substantial potential inflation waiting in the wings.
The reason? Because banks are holding huge reserves that have not shown up in the economy at large just yet. In remarks to the Minnesota Bankers Association on Feb. 16, Narayana R. Kocherlakota (photo top, left), President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota, explained the situation and warned of the consequences:
The following text ran as a full page advertisement for Metropolitan Life in the March 30, 1959 issue of Life magazine:
There IS A Cure For Inflation
To most people, inflation means that it costs more to set the table, more to clothe and house the family.
Inflation hurts everyone alike. It hurts farmers and city people, business and labor. It is not a political problem. It bears no party labels. It is a very serious economic problem for all our people.
Even a "little" inflation is bad
Some have suggested that a slight rise in prices each year is not harmful.
Economic history reveals that there is no such thing as a "little" inflation. As long as prices keep rising year after year, the value of the dollar declines and people -- particularly those on fixed incomes -- are seriously hurt.
Dan Woolley's story of survival in Haiti after the earthquake there caused his hotel to collapse around him is one of what are certain to be hundreds if not thousands of such stories that will be revealed in the coming weeks and months. But, there is something unusual about Woolley's story, something that makes it noteworthy. Specifically, his use of technology to survive.
Woolley was in Haiti to make a film about the effects of poverty on the people of that unfortunate nation. Because he was practicing a skill — filmaking — that relies on ever increasing amounts of technology it's no surprise that he was well equiped with the tools of his trade when the quake hit, namely, a DSLR camera and an iPhone.
As it turns out, these devices were essential to his survival. According to the MSNBC report discussing Woolley's ordeal, he "had taken refuge in an elevator shaft, where he used an iPhone first-aid app to treat a compound fracture of his leg and a cut on his head. He had already used his digital SLR camera’s focusing light to illuminate his surroundings, and taken pictures of the wreckage to help find a safe place to wait to be rescued — or to die."
While interesting in and of itself, Woolley's survival based on these devices is interesting in a larger sense in that it teaches us something about the relative utility of differing economic systems.
An interesting, if unreported, fact is that arctic sea ice has increased by 26 percent since 2007. That's according to data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado that shows summer sea ice in the Arctic has increased by 409,000 square miles in that time.
While the American media has been utterly silent on this, leaving most Americans still thinking that the Arctic is soon to be ice free, the UK's Daily Mail was willing to report the facts in a recent story with the provocative title, "The mini ice age starts here."
Regarding the onset of a cooling trend, the paper cites the work of Professor Mojib Latif, described as a "leading member" the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to the paper, Latif and his colleagues are scientists that "could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or skeptics."
More Articles...
Page 1 of 5
