The handwriting was always on the wall

Most Americans are trusting souls not prone to imagining a lot of conspiracies going on designed to change our government and the capitalistic economy we have thrived in for most of our existence as a country.  There is much evidence, however, to indicate we are being victimized by a cabal of radicals who want to change our form of government and economy to conform to their ideas, which not surprisingly can best be described as socialism.  An interesting little drama is being played out currently in the media that shines a light on what has been going on and is playing out now in the political scene.  Francis Fox Piven, a septuagenarian Columbia professor and the surviving half of the husband and wife, so-called Cloward-Piven Strategy, was singled out on the Beck TV show as a progressive who actually promoted and promotes even now violent demonstrations and the abuse of the welfare system to systematically bring down the government and replace it with a socialist regime.  All this may seem a far fetched conspiracist's mad dream, except for the fact that much of what the Cloward-Piven Strategy called for back in the 1960's has already happened.  It is all laid out in chapter and verse in this carefully documented American Thinker article written by James Simpson, a former WH economist and financial analyst.  Based on all the books I have read on the causes of the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, and the connections between BO, George Soros, Acorn and all the rest, my conclusion is there has been a concerted effort over time to implement the Cloward-Piven Strategy and that to a very large extend it has succeeded brilliantly. The Tea Party movement has been a rear guard attempt to slow the the strategy down and give people the opportunity to see what's been happening for themselves.  Now we are at one of those famous "tipping" points in time when we are at a fork and one road takes us down the Cloward-Piven path and the other gets us back to our roots and the way of life of our founders and forefathers. Parenthetically  I find it interesting that unless one considers the Scandinavian countries with their dependency on oil revenues as examples, no where else can one point to a successful socialist state, while examples of  successful market based free enterprise countries abound.  As they say, Go Figure.

Collection of links to von Mises articles

Here's one on the dubious value of government generated statistics.  And here is a related article on the misuse of statisttical measurements by economists.

Muni market

Lotsa talk about the muni market, defaults and the rest.  Here's an article by Veronique de Rugby, economist who writes for Reason, that suggests the original bailout has caused municipalities to go further into the debt market than before and that should yet another huge bailout be required to salvage many cities from bankruptcy, all bets are off for a sustained recovery.  In other words if the jobless "recovery" we are now experiencing doesn't hold up, watch out below!

GE and crony capitalism

In the 18th century Adam Smith wrote a great deal about the downside of the then reigning macro economic concept of mercantilism.  In short mercantilism was the control of the nation's economy and trade by means of tariffs and "bounties" which allowed the governments to ensure they always had a favorable balance of trade.  To an extend this system worked but only until it inevitably promoted protectionist wars and rampant smuggling to get around the punitive restrictions and the like imposed by each country. The expression "beggar thy neighbor" no doubt came from this era.  Smith argued for free trade and the removal of all tariffs and the like to promote greater wealth for all countries.  He was slightly ahead of his times.  Today's mercantilism is crony capitalism and the links and commentary in this post provide a good picture of how GE and the Obama administration are implementing and playing this game. Its hard to see how this marriage can help the economy long term, but then Obama simply wants to be reelected at this point and GE wants to improve its bottom line, so who's thinking long term?

Mukasy speaks on the WOT and the left's analysis

In This piece former AG Michael Mukasey speaks to the flimflammery of the left when it comes to analyzing the causes and reasons for the Bush administration's WOT.  As usual the left is shown to reason more with its emotions and biases than with objectivism.  And so we have yet another book that confuses and obscures more than enlightens.

The left's Tuscon strategy

There is now little doubt that the left is consciously and vigorously using the Tuscon shooting-tragedy as a lever to control speech in the US. This post here from Powerline demonstrates quite clearly their strategy and how they are implementing it in the real world.  At a recent party I ran in to two people who were using Beck's attack on the violent radicalism promoter Francis Fox Piven as an example of how dangerous and poisonous the political climate and discourse has become in the country today.  Both people, quite reasonable sorts, had made a connectionin their own minds between the Tuscon shooting and rancorous political debate and specifically mention Beck as the major culprit.    The background on Piven and her radicalism is on display in the referenced post here and suggests the disinformation tactics are shrewd and effective.