Liberty Shmiberty: The Thin Gruel Offered by The Tea Party

"[T]he proper solution would be to get us back to liberty."

-- Rep. Michele Bachmann, self-appointed leader of the Tea Party Republicans in the US House, in New Hampshire today, here

"Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones."

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1978, here

Wisconsin Senate Republicans Receive Death Threats

The Wisconsin State Department of Justice is trying to find out who sent the following email to Republican Senators in Wisconsin, threatening them, and their families, with death:

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we've had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it's going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records. We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn't leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so "high" on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won't tell you all of them because that's just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it's necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We Will "get rid of" (in which I mean kill) you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel that it's worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!

The email was published here by AM 620 WTMJ News Radio.

Commies With Bullhorns Storm Wisconsin State Capitol Building in Madison

Ann Althouse and Meade in Madison have the stories and the pictures, for example here, here and here.

Protestors, including assorted Socialist Workers Party members, got inside because someone inside opened a window in a Democrat's office.

As a public employee, Althouse stands to lose personally if Walker and the Republicans get their way, but she provides remarkably objective reporting on the threats to democracy in Wisconsin posed by the actions of Democrats.

Declaration of Independence 'Decidedly Un-Revolutionary'

John Fea seems to agree with historian David Armitage that ours was a revolution not made but prevented, and takes the view that Abraham Lincoln was a revisionist in his reading of the Declaration:

Historian David Armitage, in a fascinating book entitled The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, has argued convincingly that the Declaration of Independence was written primarily as a document asserting American political sovereignty in the hopes that the newly created United States would secure a place in the international community of nations. In fact, Armitage asserts, the Declaration was discussed abroad more than it was at home. This meant that the Declaration was "decidedly un-revolutionary. It would affirm the maxims of European statecraft, not affront them." ...

Lincoln was a revisionist. He found the Declaration useful for reasons that were not primarily intended by its writers.

Unemployment Hits 900 at AOL after Buying HuffPo

As reported here:

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said Thursday the company is cutting 200 jobs in the US and 700 in India following its $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post.

Moochelle's Handbag: A Thousand Large

Story here.

Wisconsin Republicans Find Way To Strip Union Power Without Quorum

They separated the union-limiting measures from the spending part of the pending legislation which requires the quorum and passed them without the Democrats, who ran away to prevent legislative action and who remain out of state.

Story here.

Miami Police Want Honeywell Spy Drone to Stare into Homes and Backyards

The story is reported by CBS Miami here:

Police admit the MAV, if flown low enough, has the ability to look into people’s home, but that is not its intended purpose.

For a description of the Honeywell (designed-for-the-military-backpack-able) Micro Air Vehicle, see here and here:

The story uses the word "scan," which is alarming and is reminiscent of the backscatter scanners being used at airports, but these MAVs are equipped with cameras only, as if that isn't bad enough. The technology isn't developed enough to make scanners this small (13 inches in diameter), but don't say you weren't warned when I'm telling you again that that's coming.

Largest Monthly Deficit in History, Senate Can't Agree to ANY Spending Cuts

So says The Washington Times, here:

The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February, a $223 billion shortfall that put a sharp point on the current fight on Capitol Hill about how deeply to cut this year’s spending. ...

The Senate plans to vote Tuesday on competing proposals to cut spending, but Democrats have rejected GOP-backed cuts of more than $50 billion, and Republicans have ruled out Democrats’ cuts of less than $10 billion, meaning neither plan will draw the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and pass.

The country should consider that when established institutions become incapable of resolving problems of such great significance, history teaches that time and again they are replaced, sometimes violently and at the expense of life and liberty.

Only the effete would pay such a price for intransigence.

John Locke Believed in Neither Sodomy nor Same Sex Marriage

From the First Treatise of Government:

Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, Observations, 155. Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: if this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern; sins, which I suppose have their principal aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto.

"Their principal aggravation . . . that [adultery, incest and sodomy] cross the main intention of nature . . . with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto."

In other words, these sins are the enemies of marriage and the family.

Growing Ranks of Hidden Unemployed Explains Recent Drop in Unemployment

So says Alfred Tella, here:

Fully two-thirds of the 0.9 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate [from November 2010 through February 2011] was due to the decline in labor force participation. If the participation rate had behaved normally, the unemployment rate would have declined by only 0.3 point between November and February, to 9.5 percent last month [instead of 8.9].

He shows this has happened before, too, in 1950, 1958 and 1983.

Stealing Food From the Future Depends on Stealing its Water

After reading this important story from Charles Laurence for the UK Telegraph, you will understand the necessity of industrial scale farming and genetically modified seeds, except that even after all that, the water beneath the High Plains isn't coming back, 20 percent of the world's food supply will disappear, the Colorado River will be the West's last lifeline, and T. Boone Pickens aims to make a mint in the process.

Here's an excerpt:

[I]t was only in the 1940s, after the Dust Bowl (the result of a severe drought and excessive farming in the early 1930s), that the US Geological Survey worked out that the watering holes were clues to the Ogallala [Aquifer], now believed to be the world's largest body of fresh water. They were about to repeat the dreams of man from the days of Ancient Egypt and Judea to turn the desert green, only without the Nile or Jordan. With new technology the wells could reach the deepest water, and from the early 1950s the boom was on. Some of the descendants of Dust Bowl survivors became millionaire landowners.

'Since then,' says David Brauer of the US Agriculture Department agency, the Ogallala Research Service, 'we have drained enough water to half-fill Lake Erie of the Great Lakes.' Billions upon billions of gallons – or, as they prefer to measure it, acre-feet of water, each one equivalent to a football field flooded a foot deep – have been pumped. 'The problem,' he goes on, 'is that in a brief half-century we have drawn the Ogallala level down from an average of 240ft to about 80.'

Brauer's agency was set up in direct response to the Dust Bowl, with the brief of finding ways to make sure that the devastation never happens again. If it does, the impact on the world's food supply will be far greater. The irrigated Plains grow 20 per cent of American grain and corn (maize), and America's 'industrial' agriculture dominates international markets. A collapse of those markets would lead to starvation in Africa and anywhere else where a meal depends on cheap American exports. 'The Ogallala supply is going to run out and the Plains will become uneconomical to farm,' Brauer says. 'That is beyond reasonable argument. Our goal now is to engineer a soft landing. That's all we can do.'

Obamacare Waivers Climb 311 Since Jan. 26 to 1,040, New Website Obscures Data

From the new reporting site here:

As of the end of February 2011, a total of 1040 one-year waivers have been granted.  This update includes 126 new approvals.  Key facts about annual limits waivers:

Of all the waivers granted to date, the vast majority – more than 95 percent of all waivers – were granted to health plans that are employment-related.  These include self-insured employer health plans, health reimbursement arrangements, collectively-bargained multi-employer plans, and health plans sold by issuers to fully-insured employers.  The links below contain descriptions of these and other types of entities receiving waivers.

The number of waivers processed each month continues to decline.  After granting over 500 waivers in December (an increase related to the fact that December 1 was the final day to apply for a waiver for a plan or policy year that begins on January 1, as many plans do), HHS granted less than 200 waivers in January, and 126 in February.

The number of enrollees in plans with annual limits waivers is 2.62 million, representing less than 2 percent of all Americans who have private health insurance today.

The old site listed the waivers sequentially (here), with the cumulative total of persons affected clearly shown. Now you have to cull the data from no less than 7 separate links.

In less than three months we've gone from 222 waivers in December 2010 to 1,040 waivers in early March 2011, and from 1.5 million affected to 2.6 million.

So we're told the number of waivers processed is declining even though the total waivers granted continues to climb dramatically, and the new website makes the data more difficult to retrieve and entitles it "promoting transparency."

Up is down, wrong is right, night is day. Obama isn't a Bolshevik. He is not an ideologue. 

How Much Capital Backs Your Assets?

Spanish banks are scrambling to raise capital amid new rules upping the requirements for "solvency":

Under the new rules, [Spanish] savings banks must raise the proportion of core capital they hold to 8.0 percent of total assets from the current six percent, or 10.0 percent if they are unlisted.

So imagine you have assets (for example, loans outstanding on a house and a car), together actually worth about $250,000.

Up until now, if you were a Spanish bank, you'd have to have 15,000 simoleons stashed away to cover the "business." The new rules mean you're going to have to have 20,000, or 25,000 simoleons.

In your case, think IRA, or 401K, or your brokerage account. Or some CDs at the bank. How much do you have stashed away?

And then consider that the median amount saved for retirement in America is only $2,000. That means half of the country has more than that saved, and the other half has less than that saved. But even at the median, that $2,000 is less than 1 percent of $250,000 in assets.

Easily half of the US population is probably insolvent by this measure, as are many US banks.

My own bank operates under a Consent Decree requiring Tier 1 capital of 8 percent, and total capital of 11 percent. Roughly 10 cents on the dollar.

Most of America is built and runs on this kind of debt. And much of it is insolvent, even on these less easy, easy terms.

"Owe no man anything . . .."

Observer Figures Obama Has Spent 2 Months of 25 as President . . . Golfing

As reported here:

This is the president’s 60th time golfing as president, meaning Obama has spent two months of his presidency on the golf course.

So far.

Does keeping track of this count as a stimulus job?

DC: Tops for Food Stamps, Surrounded by Richest Counties

DC ranks number one for the highest participation rate by population in the food stamp program, yet is surrounded by these, among the 25 richest counties in America:

 1. Loudoun County, VA
 2. Fairfax County, VA
 3. Howard County, MD
 6. Fairfax City, VA
 9. Arlington County, VA
10. Montgomery County, MD
12. Stafford County, VA (south of Prince William County)
13. Calvert County, MD
14. Prince William County, VA
21. Charles County, MD
23. Alexandria City, VA.

Story here.

Income inequality, writ large. Your tax dollars at work.

Housing Prices Fall to Q1 2000 Levels

With more declines of at least 5 percent expected.

Story here.

"I Am Surprised That People Are Not Even Angrier"

Me too:

'Too many current attacks on bank bonuses miss the point. There is no "right" amount of money. It is not fine to earn a quarter of a million but "obscene" to get £5 million. But what is true is that people who accumulate very large sums tend to think they are brilliant. In a proper market economy, if they are not brilliant, they get their comeuppance. In the too-big-to-fail economy, they just go on getting rich, paid for by the rest of us who go on getting poorer. Like Mr King, I am surprised that people are not even angrier.'

-- Charles Moore, here, for the UK Telegraph

To Forgo Something is Acting, Says Judge Kessler

But National Review's Rich Lowry is having none of it, here, responding to this statement by Kessler:

"It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not 'acting,' especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something." ...

Long ago, the Commerce Clause got stretched beyond recognition. In 1942, the Supreme Court used it to uphold a law penalizing a farmer for growing wheat in excess of his approved allotment, even though it was for his own consumption. At least the poor sap was doing something. According to Kessler, Congress could also punish him for acting on a thought not to grow wheat.

Opponents of ObamaCare say that if it's blessed by the courts, there will no longer be any limiting principle on federal regulatory power. If that seems far-fetched, behold the mental activities of one Judge Gladys Kessler.

Which begs the question, Isn't Kessler's reasoning a residual influence of the Christian religion on matters of state?

Christianity teaches that there are plenty of sins of commission, but also of omission, as per Paul's letter to the Romans, and the letter of James. By refusing to purchase health insurance, by Kessler's reasoning, one is almost committing a sin against the state, of, by and for the people, who will have to bear the costs of paying for the deadbeat's omission.

At the Last Judgment the offender would be punished in hell, but in the Immanentized Eschaton which ideologues are trying to foist upon us, he'll just pay a fine.

Virtue should be so easy. 

FDIC Rewards Banks Which Themselves Violate Regulatory Guidelines

Richard Suttmeier noted here on February 22 that three banks which acquired the assets of failed banks on Friday, February 18, 2011, are themselves overexposed to construction and development loans or commercial real estate loans, or both:

Three of the banks that acquired the assets of Friday’s failed banks were also in violation of the regulatory guidelines for exposures of risk-based capital to construction and development loans and to commercial real estate loans. SCBT National Association (SCBT) has risk ratios of 145% for C and D loans and 423.7% for CRE loans that are 89.3% funded. Bank of Marin (BMRC) has a risk ratio of 67.4% for C and D loans, which is fine, but has a 485.2% exposure for CRE loans with a loan pipeline that’s 78.7% funded. First California Bank (FCAL) has a risk ratio of 41.5% for C and D loans, which is fine, but has a 358.2% exposure to CRE loans with a loan pipeline of 86.9%. ValuEngine rates each of these banks a Hold. The FDIC policy of rewarding banks with overexposures to real estate loans is deciding which banks fail and which banks survive, which is wrong.

State capitalism is the official economic policy of the American Fascist Police State.