On the prosecution of the Bush Administration

I’m delighted this effort is still alive.

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Lobbyists, not Congressional staffers were allowed to read the “stimulus” bill

It’s like the great Frederic Bastiat (1801 – 1850) wrote in his legendary essay “The Law.”

The law is perverted! The law – and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation – the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish!

In the wake of the injustice described by Bastiat, the people revolted. They assembled guillotines.

Paul Bedard of USNew’s Washington Whispers reported:

“We’re receiving E-mails from Capitol Hill staffers expressing frustration that they can’t get a copy of the stimulus bill agreed to last night at a price of $789 billion. What’s more, staffers are complaining about who does have a copy: K Street lobbyists. E-mails one key Democratic staffer: “K Street has the bill, or chunks of it, already, and the congressional offices don’t. So, the Hill is getting calls from the press (because it’s leaking out) asking us to confirm or talk about what we know—but we can’t do that because we haven’t seen the bill. Anyway, peeps up here are sort of a combo of confused and like, ‘Is this really happening?'” Reporters pressing for details, meanwhile, are getting different numbers from different offices, especially when seeking the details of specific programs.” (Read more from usnews.com)

See Also, Ron Paul Discusses Stimulus on CNN American Morning 02/16/2009:

Marc Faber: Stimulus = Disaster

This video covers it all. Please watch.

Marc Faber:

“Let the banks go bankrupt . . . but guarantee the bank’s depositors.”

“The economic crisis and the financial crisis is a direct consequence of continuous U.S. government intervention into the economy through fiscal and monetary policies that have been designed to never have a recession.”

“With the stimulus package the government is proposing, especially the spending package, I think the depression will last longer, and the government, that is largely unproductive, will continue to grow at the expense of the private sector and crowd out the private sector.”

“There has always been an extremely close and cozy relationship between the regulators and between the government agencies, and government related enterprises like Freddie Mac and Fannie May, and Wall Street.”

“There is no free lunch. Someone has to pay. The problem arose because we have too much debt, not because we have too little debt. . . . that additional debt will not be spent very productively, because it’s spent by the government and not the private sector.”

The price of gold will be higher than the price of the Dow Industrials.

“The way I see economic policies in the world, and in particular, in the U.S. is print money, if it doesn’t work, print more.”

“It is not a failure of the free market that brought about the crisis, it is continuous intervention by the government.”

“As Americans, our job is to promote policies that are best for . . . Israel”

by Melissa Rossi Author, What Every American Should Know about the Middle East (Plume/Penguin, Jan. 2009)

“I’d thought it would just be a breezy Friday afternoon, when I clicked on today’s post of M.J. Rosenberg, here on Huffington Post.
Director of Policy for the Israel Policy Forum, Mr. Rosenberg’s blog entry concerns the upcoming Israeli election — and he tells us the outcome is ‘really not our business.’ After all, he blithely notes, ‘As Americans, our job is to promote policies that are best for America, and for Israel.’

(NOTE on Sunday, Feb 8: The above quote is from his original column on Huffington Post, which he changed over the weekend — deleting the controversial ‘and for Israel’ part. The column, however, can still be read on the Israel Policy Forum at www.israelpolicyforum.org/ — as of Sunday at least.)

There weren’t comments when I started reading — but by the time I read through his post and hit the reply button, there were already five comments and more pending. All of them saying the same thing — no, Mr. Rosenberg — our job is to promote policies that are best for America. PERIOD.” (Read more from huffintonpost.com)

The Rewriting, Un-rewriting and Re-rewriting of History

“In the ‘Rejectionism and Accommodation’ chapter of Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The Palestinians, Noam Chomsky recounts how Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s 1971 peace initiative has been effaced from history. Sadat’s offer of ‘a full peace treaty on the pre-June 1967 borders, with security guarantees, recognized borders and so on’ was rejected by Israel with the backing of the U.S. Henry Kissinger ‘assumed that Israel’s power was unchallengeable’ and thus ignored Sadat’s warnings that ‘he would be forced to resort to war if his efforts at a peaceful settlement were rebuffed.'” (Read more from antiwar.com)

Peter Schiff: Government acting as consumer of last resort

“The fiscal stimulus bill being debated in Congress not only won’t help the economy, it will make the recession much worse, says Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital.

Schiff scoffs at the notion the economic decline is starting to level off and concedes no government action means a ‘terrible’ recession. But the path of increased government intervention will lead to ‘unmitigated disaster,’ says Schiff, who gained notoriety in 2007-08 for his prescient calls on the housing bubble and U.S. stocks.

The problem, he says, is the government is trying to perpetuate a ‘phony economy’ based on borrowing and spending. With the U.S. consumer tapped out, the government is ‘now taking on the mantle’ of consumer of last resort, he continues, predicting the bond bubble will soon burst – if it hasn’t already – ultimately leading to a collapse of the dollar and an ‘inflationary depression worse than anything any of us have ever seen.'” (Read more from westernstandard.blogs.com)

Watch the video in this earlier post to learn about Peter Schiff, and to see the ridicule he dealt with for speaking the truth.

Calif. Counties Threaten Tax Revolt Against State

“California counties are throwing another wrinkle into the state’s cash crisis as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders try to agree on a way to erase a $42 billion budget deficit.

Several counties are considering some form of tax revolt — either filing lawsuits or delaying tax payments to the state — because the governor has proposed withholding payments to them for as long as seven months in a move to preserve cash.

Local governments already are missing out because the state has imposed a 30-day payment delay to counties. . . .

Meanwhile, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the state’s $46 billion general obligation bonds this week, leaving California with the worst state credit rating in the nation.” (Read more from cbs13.com)

Maybe the counties are tired of spending $10 billion a year to keep people in prison.

How Village Voice Media Uses Digg to Game Their Traffic Numbers

“This is the story about a girl that’s actually a dude who’s brought in 3.8 – 19.4 million visitors* to Village Voice Media websites by gaming Digg.

Village Voice Media appears to be running an organized reciprocal Digg campaign using staff at their network of alt-weekly newspapers across the United States. Two Digg users, Ivanb and Philostrato, are responsible for the vast majority of that traffic” (Read more from thedeets.com)