Finally, it hits Canada

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Took a while, but finally Canada's annual inflation rate slid below zero for the first time since 1994 in June, falling to minus 0.3 per cent from 0.1 per cent in May.

So does this mean we'll see banks go belly-up and all those horror stories we heard about elsewhere?

Health Care Lobbying

[valknott.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting report on Common Cause about the health industry lobbying of Congress:

http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=5281465

Of particular interest is Table 2a providing information on the top recipients of this money from the House and Senate:

http://www.commoncause.org/atf/cf/%7Bfb3c17e2-cdd1-4df6-92be-bd4429893665%7D/COMMON_CAUSE_HEALTHCAREREPORT_JUNE2009.PDF

A lot of these names are on the committees dealing with the health care legislation or are involved in the current markup (i.e., gutting) of the proposed legislation under review. So what do you think? Are the health industry lobbyists going to prevail? What is your prediction regarding the content of the ultimate piece of legislation that will emerge from Congress? Is the Democrat whining about needing a 60 person super-majority simply an excuse to gut the legislation and make sure the people who fill their campaign coffers are satisfied?

(no subject)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

The US-China Ponzi scheme

Imagine becoming so successful at your job that you stack up $2 trillion in income, which you conservatively place in short-term U.S. Treasury bonds for safekeeping.

Now imagine that when you try to cash in those bonds to buy a few things for your kids, the clerk at the bank abruptly shuts her window and tells you to go away.

That is essentially the situation faced by China these days as it wonders whether its plan to manufacture goods for U.S. consumers over the past two decades in exchange for a pile of credit slips was really such a hot idea.

It really should be blatantly obvious that deficit spending can not continue indefinitely, any more than you can build a perpetual motion machine. Maybe it's the same mentality that makes people keep trying though. Well, people are likely to learn the hard way, or maybe more likely, not learn and keep bashing their head against the wall.

It isn't all about property...

[inibo.livejournal.com]

(Well, actually it is, but we won't go there.)

On a previous thread I was said to be an exemplar of the libertarian obsession with property rights, my property rights in particular. Maybe, maybe not, but let's pretend it's not all about property for a bit. I'd like to quote one of my favorite bloggers, Will Grigg. This particular piece is about John Holdren. "Holdren is Barack Obama’s “Science Czar,” in which capacity he counsels the president regarding the role of science in public policy."

Now whether or not Grigg connects his dots the way he intended is one thing, but in the course of the piece he discusses the idea and proponents of compulsory population control. It is that I want to touch on.

“How can we reduce reproduction?” wrote Garrett Hardin in a 1970 Science magazine article entitled “Parenthood: Right or Privilege?” “Persuasion must be tried first…. Mild coercion may soon be accepted – for example, tax rewards for reproductive non-proliferation. But in the long run, a purely voluntary system selects for its own failure: noncooperators out-breed cooperators. So what restraints shall we employ? A policeman under every bed? Jail sentences? Compulsory abortion? Infanticide?... Memories of Nazi Germany rise and obscure our vision.”

I like Grigg's comment: "Oh, those dreadful Nazis: If only they hadn’t given totalitarian eugenics such a bad name..."

Hardin was one of many anti-natalist luminaries – the list included Kingsley Davis, Margaret Mead, Paul Ehrlich, and sundry Planned Parenthood leaders – who endorsed the 1971 manifesto The Case for Compulsory Birth Control by Edgar R. Chasteen. That book offered one-stop shopping for policy-makers seeking draconian population management methods.

So let me ask about the morality of this... I hesitate to call it philosophy... this idea that someone, somewhere can make a determination as to who is or isn't fit to reproduce. On no other grounds than a kind of visceral horror that people could not just conceive the idea, but promote it as good public policy, I would think anyone who wasn't completely dead inside would be thinking torches and pitchforks.

Nevertheless, it is not only promoted, but by academics who depend to a large extent on grants and subsidies from many and sundry levels of government.

Though I do not claim to speak for all libertarians or voluntarists I have to ask why progressives wouldn't be as appalled at this as they are about Tibet or, dare I say Iran or Darfur? Why does it take a "right-wing" Christian "extremist" like Grigg to to even ask the question?

The deeper question is, why would you want any entity to have the power to be able to implement such a policy whether or not it is on the agenda today or not?