The other day I posted a blog about the free market providing roads, police and fire services. You can read it here. While on my way to work this morning, I got to thinking about the roads again. Where I live, we just got a couple feet of snow, and we have more coming today. It has been 4 days since the snow came, but I still had a heck of a time getting to work. Half the roads are still covered, and now the snow is packed down and turning to ice. I’m not talking about side roads here. I’m talking about the main roads.

So, this got me thinking. How would this be treated differently if the roads were private? Well, as far as technology, let’s just say everything is the same, which if roads were private all these years, there would be much more advanced technology. I am assuming the same technology, but there would be different incentives. If you own a road, and you earn income from tolls or some other mechanism that is pay for use, you would make sure those roads were quickly cleared. If they weren’t, you’d lose money. How would you charge a toll if no one can drive on your road? Your entire business model depends on people driving on your road. You would have to get the roads cleared quickly, or suffer huge losses.

Government on the other hand doesn’t really have any great incentive to get the roads cleared. Yeah, they get around to it, but what’s the rush. They may have angry constituents, but by the time election day rolls around, that’s water under the bridge. They need a reason to justify their expanding budgets, so they can’t ignore the issue completely. On the other hand, if they take longer to clean the roads, they can say they needed more help. Then they have more reason for bigger budgets and more employees.

Again, just some thoughts I had on my way into work. This is by no means meant to be a great argument for private roads. Most people can’t comprehend how the private sector could provide roads and then bill for them, so we just stick with the crappy government system where they use road bills to rob us blind and give handouts to their buddies and union supporters.

The media is all a buzz about the First Lady. Everything she does seems to have the glamour of a Hollywood premier. What is she up to now? Well, she’s going to tell everyone how to feed their kids.

First lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday plans to unveil a campaign to fight childhood obesity, a cause that is becoming her top policy priority.

The last thing you want to be is someone in the government’s top policy priority.

Her campaign is part of a government effort to reframe the debate about the nation’s expanding waistlines. Top health officials, including Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, say they want to shift the conversation away from achieving a particular weight or dress size and instead emphasize the benefits of good nutrition and physical activity.

Well, that doesn’t sound so bad right. They just want to switch the conversation. Maybe she’ll have her own workout video. Wait, nevermind. If she does, we’d probably all be forced to buy it somehow. Any way, they just want to have a conversation. What’s so bad about that?

The U.S. obesity rate grew rapidly through the 1980s and 1990s, but figures released last month show the increase has slowed. About two-thirds of Americans are counted as either overweight or obese, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Hmmm, wonder why there was such a rapid increase through the 80s and 90s. Could it be this idiotic food pyramid that was crammed down out throats by who? Oh yeah, that’s right the government wanted to tell all us ignorant peasants how to eat back then, so they created first the four food groups and then the food pyramid. They also said do not eat a lot of fat. So what happened? Everyone thought the FDA had to know what it was talking about. Surely, they just wanted what was best for us. Well, it just so happens everyone got fatter after this advice. People in pursuit of being slim avoided fat, but what replaced fat? Sugar. If you look at this idiotic chart, it tells you to eat breads out the wazzoo. Could this have anything to do with our corn production? Hmm, just so happens we make so much damn corn that we now are forced to use it for fuel (despite lack of benefits), and it just so happens we are told to eat 6 to 11 servings of wheat products. Nah, not our government. They would never. It just so happens, the breads category is the one that makes you fat, but hey what do I know. Government obviously knows best. I mean, they wouldn’t want everyone’s health to get so bad that we’d all come begging for health care reform….would they?

Ms. Obama’s plan has four planks, according to people briefed on it. She wants to improve nutrition and physical education in schools; promote activity such as walking and biking in community planning; make healthy food more available, particularly in poor areas; and make nutrition information on food packages clearer.

Aahhh, there it is. I was wondering when the gun was coming out. The article calls the gun planks. Isn’t that nice?

She wants to improve nutrition and physical education in schools. Lovely. Like our kids aren’t getting a lack of education in the first place. Now we are going to increase physical education, which will help us better compete with China how? Also, does Mrs. Obama realize that government schools are always excluded from these so called food bans like transfat?  I guess the fact that kids spend most of their days at government schools has nothing to do with there health.

Ok, but what’s so bad about promoting walking and biking in community planning? Nothing if it’s just talk. I’m sure we’ll have our money stolen though to fulfill her vision. I’m sure this will be a handout to ACORN and the like to make communities more healthy and socialist.

Lastly, how is she going to make healthy food more available and nutrition information on packages clearer? The only way government knows how. She’s going to use government force.

While I’m sure she feels good about herself taking on obesity for “the children” and the media will make it sound like she’s parting the red sea, surely she should realize that government policy had a lot to do with creating the obesity epidemic. As with all societal ills, she could just repeal government policies. How about the FDA removes their food pyramid and says find your own health information on the internet. How about the FDA gets out of the food production and subsidy business. Maybe we could afford other foods than corn based wheats and high fructose corn syrup based foods. Maybe we could import cheaper vegetables from other nations. We don’t need another nanny. Some please find the first lady a different hobby. How about raising your own kids and teaching them about liberty.

via Michelle Obama Launches Plan to Fight Childhood Obesity – WSJ.com.

The Wall Street Journal has an article talking about how Ben Bernanke is going to layout his master plan on how to prevent inflation after printing trillions of dollars while at the same time not collapsing the economy. Sounds like a tight rope walk on an icy rope to me.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will begin this week to lay out a blueprint for a credit tightening, to be followed once the Fed decides the economy has recovered sufficiently.

The centerpiece will be a new tool Congress gave the central bank in October 2008: an interest rate the Fed pays banks on money they leave on reserve at the central bank. Known as “interest on excess reserves,” this rate is now 0.25%.

The Fed is still at least several months away from raising interest rates or beginning to drain the flood of money it poured into the financial system in 2008 and 2009. But looking ahead to when the economy is strong enough to warrant tightening credit, officials have been discussing for months which financial levers to pull, when to start and how best to communicate their intent.

When the Fed is ready to tap the brakes, it plans to raise the rate paid on excess reserves, according to Fed officials in interviews and recent speeches. The higher rate would entice banks to tie up money they otherwise might lend to customers or other banks. The Fed expects such a maneuver to pull up other key short-term rates, including the federal-funds rate at which banks lend to each other overnight—long the main tool for steering the economy.

In response to the worst financial crisis in decades, the Fed took extraordinary action to prevent an even deeper recession— pushing short-term interest rates to zero and printing trillions of dollars to lower long-term rates. Extricating itself from these actions will require both skill and luck: If the Fed moves too fast, it could provoke a new economic downturn; if it waits too long, it could unleash inflation, and if it moves clumsily it could unsettle markets in ways that disrupt the nascent economic recovery. Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues are attempting to explain—both to markets and the public—that the Fed has an exit strategy in the works in order to bolster confidence in its ability to steer the economy.

Couple questions, because I am not an economist. First, where does the money come from to pay this “interest on excess reserves”? I guess they just print it. So the answer to preventing inflation is to print money and pay banks with newly printed money to hold their reserves with the Fed. If what I understand of inflation is correct, it’s the printing of new money that is inflation, and higher prices is just a symptom of inflation. It sounds to me like all this does is create more inflation. Again, I’m not an economist, so I could be completely wrong on this. It sounds to me like someone taking ibuprofen when they have strep throat. You may have minimized the symptoms, but you still have strep throat that needs to be dealt with. (I had strep a month ago, so this was the best example I could think of.)

Second question is is it me or are the conspiracy of bankers controlling the world sounding more and more realistic. They screw up the whole country, and what is their punishment? They get bailouts dollar for dollar with no losses on their bad bets. Then they get paids to keep their share of newly printed money at the Fed. They get paid when they lend it out at 10 to 1, and if they screw up, guess who’s back to bailing them out.

Third question is more rhetorical. Based on the last paragraph, does anyone have “confidence in it’s ability to steer the economy”? This is the same Fed that steered the economy into its current crisis. They created a huge bubble because of their low interest rates, which they are now trying to cure with even lower interest rates. Now they tell us they have a master plan to get us out of printing trillions of dollars without massive inflation.

The nature of its exit from today’s unusually low interest rates will affect everything from mortgage rates and what companies pay on short-term borrowings to the rates savers earn. The timing and sequence of the steps are the subject of intense speculation in financial markets.

You have to just love the government. They blame the speculators when things aren’t going the way they claim they are supposed to go, and then they create all these areas of speculation. If the government would just let the free market work, speculators wouldn’t be sitting around trying to figure out what the government is going to do. I’m sure there are some out there who would pay good money to know before hand what they are going to do. Nah, that would never happen with our “trusted” officials.

Officials are warning investors and banks to prepare for surprises.

In January, Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said: “Interest rates are difficult to forecast in the most settled or normal times, and their path is especially uncertain in the current circumstances.”

The Fed is contemplating other innovative steps to manage some of the money it has pumped in, steps that officials say could come either slightly before or alongside a boost in the rate on reserves.

One is to encourage banks to tie up money at the Fed for a set period—preventing them from lending it—in what are called “term deposits.” Another is to lock up funds, and thus constrain the supply of credit in short-term lending markets, by borrowing against the Fed’s large portfolio of securities holdings, in trades known as “reverse repos.” When the Fed borrows from the markets, it effectively takes money out of circulation and replaces it with securities from its holdings.

via Fed to Outline Future Tightening Steps – WSJ.com.

Oh boy. The Fed is coming up with new tools. What’s the old saying, “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Sounds to me like they just got different hammers, and they are going to pound the same nail. The problem is we are the ones holding the nails, and I have a feeling we’re going to get our fingers smashed.

We are trying to recover from a debt driven bubble, and Americans are cleaning up their personal debt. The problem is the government is borrowing 700% more than people are paying off. Makes you wonder why you should even get your house in order, when the government is mortgaging our futures away.

For every dollar in debt that Americans have paid off since they started cleansing their balance sheets in mid-2008, the U.S. government has borrowed more than $7. All the hard work by consumers to replenish their piggy banks may be for naught if big government budget deficits play havoc with the economy.

Last week’s federal budget didn’t provide much solace. The Obama administration projected that the federal debt could double over the next decade, prompting Moody’s Investors Service to warn that the pristine AAA credit rating of the U.S. “could come under downward pressure.”

Investors need to account for the burgeoning federal budget deficit as they save for retirement, college tuition or homes. Uncle Sam’s borrowing binge could set off a surge in inflation and push down the dollar, both of which would erode the value of savings. It could also push interest rates higher, hammering the value of the more than $1 trillion in Treasury bonds owned by households directly or through mutual funds. Income taxes, already set to rise, might have to climb further to help close the government’s budget gap.

The result could be what Laurence Siegel, director of the Research Foundation of the CFA Institute, calls a “triple whammy” of weak economic growth, higher inflation and higher tax bills. Inflation itself is a kind of tax; by driving up prices of assets like stocks and real estate, it triggers bigger capital-gains tax bills even when the assets barely keep pace with the higher cost of living.

via Protecting Yourself From the Giant New Deficit – WSJ.com.

Lewrockwell.com has a fascinating post today (actually a chapter from a book) about how the market could better handle defense from foreign agression than government. As I said in my post the other day, defense whether domestic with police or foreign with military, can be defended as a government role, because government’s role is supposed to be defending individual liberty and protecting us from coercion.

While I think it is hard for most people to believe that the free market can provide policing and military defence (even I questioned military), this post makes a great argument for the free market. As I was reading, lights were going off in my head as to downfalls of government defense and the benefits to the people of it being handled in the free market. Here are some highlights. I highly recommend reading the entire post. Whether you agree or disagree, it is fascinating.

Many people ask, “But how in the world could a laissez-faire society deal with aggression by foreign nations, since it would have no government to protect it?” Behind this question are two unrealized assumptions: first, that government is some sort of extra-societal entity with resources of its own – resources which can only be tapped for defense by the action of government – and, second, that government does, in fact, defend its citizens.

In reality, government must draw all its resources from the society over which it rules. When a governmentally controlled society takes defensive action against an aggression by a foreign power, where does it get the resources necessary to take that action? The men who fight are private individuals, usually conscripted into government service. The armaments are produced by private individuals working at their jobs. The money to pay for these armaments and the pittance doled out to the conscripts, as well as the money to pay the salaries of that small minority comprising the other members of the armed forces, is confiscated from private individuals by means of taxation.

Government’s only contribution is to organize the whole effort by the use of force – the force of the draft, taxation, and other, more minor coercions, such as rationing, wage and price ceilings, travel restrictions, etc. So, to maintain that government is necessary to defend a society from foreign aggression is to maintain that it is necessary to use domestic aggression against the citizens in order to protect them from foreign aggression.

In spite of the obvious immorality of forcing men to protect themselves against force, some people still maintain that a coerced defense is more efficient than a willing one and is, therefore, permissible or even necessary in an emergency situation such as war. A brief examination will show the fallacy of this variation of the moral/practical dichotomy.

The success of any endeavor, including war, depends on the amount of thought and effort put into it by those involved. Under the pressure of force, a man may be induced to put forth a great deal of effort and even a little thought, but his reluctant, fear-driven exertions can’t compare in efficiency and productivity with the ambitious and tireless efforts of a free man striving to accomplish something he really wants to get done. The man who works enthusiastically not only works more efficiently, he also uses his mind to discover new and better ways of reaching the goal, and such innovation is the key to success.

Furthermore, a system of force is always wasteful of resources, because the more unwilling is the victim of the force, the more energy must be diverted to keeping him in line and the less is left to accomplish the task. Men who are forced to do what they don’t want to (or not to do what they do want to) are amazingly good at devising devious and complicated ways to cheat on the system which enslaves them. This is why even the most totalitarian of governments find that they cannot wage war without huge propaganda efforts aimed at convincing their own people of the justice and necessity of the war.

Throughout history, people have been talked into submitting to the tyrannies of their governments because, they were told, their government was vitally necessary to protect them from the even more terrible depredations of other governments. The governments, having put over this bit of propaganda, then proceeded to cajole and coerce their citizens into protecting them!

Governments never defend their citizens; they can’t. What they do is make the citizens defend them, usually after their stupid and imperialistic policies have aggravated or threatened another government to the point of armed conflict. Governmental protection against foreign aggression is a myth (but a myth which, sad to say, most people actually believe in).

Government can’t defend its citizens, and it is foolish and sacrificial for the citizens to defend a coercive monopoly which not only enslaves them but makes a practice of provoking conflicts with other coercive monopolies – i.e., with other governments.

Morally, no man may be prevented from defending himself and his values, nor may he be forced to defend them if he doesn’t want to do so.

If some of the people in an area feel that one of their neighbors is not “carrying his fair share of the defense burden,” they are free to use rational persuasion to attempt to convince him that it would be in his interest to assume his own responsibility of self-defense. They may not, however, extort his compliance by any use or threat of force…even if they are clearly in the majority. Nor would it be practical for them to do so. A man who is coerced into defending his neighbors against a foreign aggressor may decide to spend part of his efforts on defending himself against his coercive neighbors instead.

In a laissez-faire society, defense against foreign aggression would be offered for sale on the free market, just as would any other type of defense. Because of the close natural connection between insurance companies and defense agencies, it would probably be most feasible to sell defense against foreign aggression in the form of insurance policies. That is, insurance companies would sell policies agreeing to protect their insureds against foreign aggression and to indemnify them for losses resulting from such aggression (the contract to be void, of course, if the insured provoked the conflict by his own aggressive actions). The insurance companies would see to it that whatever defenses were necessary to prevent the losses were provided, and they would make sure that a very efficient job of defense was done, since any losses would cost them large sums of money.

A major portion of the cost of defense against foreign aggression in a laissez-faire society would be borne originally by business and industry, as owners of industrial plants obviously have a much greater investment to defend than do owners of little houses in suburbia. If there were any real threat of aggression by a foreign power, businessmen would all be strongly motivated to buy insurance against that aggression, for the same reason that they buy fire insurance, even though they could save money in the short run by not doing so.

An interesting result of this fact is that the cost of defense would ultimately tend to be spread among the whole population, since defense costs, along with overhead and other such costs, would have to be included in the prices paid for goods by consumers. So, the concern that “free riders” might get along without paying for their own defense by parasitically depending on the defenses paid for by their neighbors is groundless. It is based on a misconception of how the free-market system would operate.

Foreign Aggression by Morris and Linda Tannehill.

The one part that really struck out at me was paying for defense like an insurance policy. As I stated the other day, insurance companies could provide fire services to their subscribers instead of having it handled through government and taxation. Insurance companies have the incentive to minimize their outlays, so they will are motivated to get fires are put out quickly and make steps to minimize the chances of having fires. The less fires they have, the higher their profits. On the other hand, the more fires (or other services delegated to a fire dept.) the bigger the department comes, and the bigger their budgets become. This is the goal of a government organization. Anyways, they explained how insurance could address defense in a similar manner.

While insurance companies have been demonized in our media and government, they provide valuable services when government isn’t involved. I don’t hear too many people complaining about their evil life and home owner insurance companies. Instead they complain about health insurance companies who are heavily regulated and where government accounts for 50% of all expenditures.

While I haven’t worked through all the details of whether I think this could work or not, here are some of the first thoughts that came to mind when I read this:

1. Insurance companies would not want war. It would cost them too much money. Since their contract is to defend their client, they would pursue diplomacy better than a government would who gets more money and control if there is a war.

2. Insurance companies in looking to reduce the chances of expensive reconstruction costs, would invest heavily in defensive measures that would dissuade agression. Instead of going out looking for dragons to slay, they would do what the people(clients) want, which is to be defended only. Most people do not want their government going out starting wars.

3. While the defense agencies might be incentized to have wars in order to grow, insurance companies, who would be the client or owner of the defense agency has the exact opposite incentive. Because of that, the insurance company would keep the defense agency in check. If the defense agency was stirring up trouble in order to get more business, they would lose the largest clients, insurance companies. Instead their incentive would be to develop lower cost technologies and to become more efficient. That would increase their profits without the need for increased warfare.

Again, this is just off the top of my head as I’m reading this myself, so I may be missing some incentives and some possible downfalls. I’d love to hear thoughts from everyone else.

Our government, the same idiots liberals look to for health care and the same idiots neocons look to for protection from overseas boogeymen, has looted and spent our way into what is going to be the beginning of the end.

Last month, we noted that Social Security had delivered its worst performance in decades. Now, Allen Sloan warns investors at Yahoo Finance that the entire program has gone into the red — and will stay there. Get ready, Sloan says, for the mother of all bailouts:

Don’t look now. But even as the bank bailout is winding down, another huge bailout is starting, this time for the Social Security system.

A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits.

Instead of helping to finance the rest of the government, as it has done for decades, our nation’s biggest social program needs help from the Treasury to keep benefit checks from bouncing — in other words, a taxpayer bailout.

via Hot Air » Blog Archive » Social Security tipping over into the red.

So, how are these morons going to attemp to get us back to solvency? Will they have the guts to cut back social security or abolish it all together? (that was rhetorical) My guess is this will be the beginning of what Peter Schiff calls the coming currency crisis. They will attempt to print their way out of it, which will send the dollar falling, hurting those on social security and everyone as a whole.

Better stock up on food, cigarettes, and bullets. They’ll be great for bartering.

This morning I was checking RT.com’s Youtube videos, and I saw that the Pentagon now is going to combat global warming. I guess this will be the “War on Climate Change” now. This is why Republicans are making a huge mistake when they think no military can be too big, not military budget can be too big, and no military policy can be a bad one.

Maybe Obama will now say to conservatives, “You don’t support the troops.”, when conservatives question money being wasted on a fake crisis. Believe me I used to think the same things when I was pro-war. I now realize that all government, whether domestic or military is looking to do one thing. That is to grow and gain more power. Like terrorism, global warming is the perfect boogeyman. This time they have the boogeyman for the left.

President Obama is hurrying to create military climate change command, apparently planning to spend a big chunk of increasingly scarce Defense Department funds on monitoring global warming. Obama and the Democratic Congress are setting the stage to focus the Pentagon on doomsday environmentalism.

via YouTube – RussiaToday’s Channel.

Update: I guess now that more proof is piling up that scientists have been manipulating data for 20 years, Obama is just going to use military to force global warming on us.

Why is anyone shocked by this? It’s always different for the rulers. They can steal, lie, commit fraud, create ponzi schemes, counterfeit money and basically every other crime you can think of, but they do not want citizens to be able to have something as basic as self defense.

Long time Anti-Gun Advocate State Senator R.C. Soles, 74, shot one of two intruders at his home just outside Tabor City, N.C. about 5 p.m. Sunday, the prosecutor for the politician’s home county said.

The intruder, Kyle Blackburn, was taken to a South Carolina hospital, but the injuries were not reported to be life-threatening, according to Rex Gore, district attorney for Columbus, Bladen and Brunswick counties.

The State Bureau of Investigation and Columbus County Sheriff ’s Department are investigating the shooting, Gore said. Soles, who was not arrested,declined to discuss the incident Sunday evening.

“I am not in a position to talk to you,” Soles said by telephone. “I’m right in the middle of an investigation.”

The Senator, who has made a career of being against gun ownership for the general public, didn’t hesitate to defend himself with his own gun when he believed he was in immediate danger and he was the victim.

via Chuck on the Right Side: Anti-Gun Senator Shoots Intruder.

Just when you think the tea parties are having an effect, the Republican establishment shows how stupid they are.

Republicans are stepping up their campaign to win donations from Wall Street, trying to capitalize on an increasing sense of regret among executives at big financial institutions for backing Democrats in 2008.

In discussions with Wall Street executives, Republicans are striving to make the case that they are banks’ best hope of preventing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats from cracking down on Wall Street.

GOP strategists hope to benefit from the reaction to the White House’s populist rhetoric and proposals, which range from sharp critiques of bonuses to a tax on big Wall Street banks, caps on executive pay and curbs on business practices deemed too risky.

Democrats have dominated Wall Street’s fund-raising circles in recent elections. Mr. Obama himself raised millions of dollars from employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and other Wall Street firms.

Now, at least some Wall Street executives have reduced their political contributions to the Democratic Party and its candidates, according to fund-raising reports and interviews with executives at financial-services firms.

Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio made a pitch to Democratic contributor James Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of J.P. Morgan, over drinks at a Capitol Hill restaurant, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Boehner told Mr. Dimon congressional Republicans had stood up to Mr. Obama’s efforts to curb pay and impose new regulations. The Republican leader also said he was disappointed many on Wall Street continue to donate their money to Democrats, according to the people familiar with the matter.

via Republicans Chase Wall Street Donors – WSJ.com.

Isn’t democracy grand? We have slime balls on all sides being controlled by Wall Street all the while plotting how they can deceive the average voter that they are trying to protect them. Obama’s White House is full of Wall Street insiders, so to believe they are going to hold Wall Street accountable is just silly. All that needs done to hold them accountable is allow them to fail.

Republicans are just asking to lose their momentum. They should not be begging Wall Street to allow them to be their laptop dogs. They should not be calling for caps on pay. They should be calling for the government to get out of the economy and out of the bailout business.

While I like Sarah Palin, I question whether she truly believes in a limited government. I think over the next couple years, her quality as a candidate will depend on who influences her ideas. She just recently backed Rand Paul, who is a limited government constitutionalist. Let’s hope the likes of Rand Paul have a lot of influence over her ideas.

In the meantime, she is no Debra Medina.

YouTube – RED WHITE AND BLUE: “Debra Medina, Candidate for Texas Governor”.