Monthly Archives: September 2013

Profiles in Pork

"One doesn’t have to sign up for law enforcement work as a Hail Mary way to avoid poverty, or the gulag . . . or the gas chamber. So, what sort of person chooses to become a law enforcer – and remains one – when it is still possible to avoid such a dirty occupation? An occupation that, as a matter of routine, puts one in the position of rousting – and caging – people who’ve done nothing that can be characterized as causing harm to others (or their property)? Who have merely run afoul of 'the law'? There seem to be four general types." Continue reading →

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The “Domestic Terrorist” You Can Call a Hero

"Bernard von NotHaus has been the called the Rosa Parks of the alternative money movement. More than 10 years ago, he had this idea that he would make his own money — not the fake stuff we are used to, but the real stuff made of actual silver. The feds raided him in in 2006. In 2007, the government outright stole 2 tons of coins from him, many of them featuring an image of Ron Paul, plus 500 silver coins and 50 gold coins. They threw him in jail and dragged his name through the mud many times. The government labeled him a 'domestic terrorist.' Yet — and this is what amazed me — he still hasn’t been sentenced. He walks around as free as you or me." Continue reading →

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Fed Warns of ‘Escalating Threats’ to U.S. Payment System

"The central bank oversees the nation's payment system. The Fed is seeking public comments on the weaknesses of the system, including its inability to process transactions in near-real-time. The U.S. lags behind other countries in the speed of transactions, the Fed said. 'In a world where several other countries are moving to ubiquitous near-real-time retail payment systems, the U.S. payment system does not have this capability,' according to the paper. The central bank also said 'cross-border payments from and to the United States are slow, inconvenient, costly and lack transparency regarding fees and timing.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFed Warns of ‘Escalating Threats’ to U.S. Payment System

Australia liberated from their long national green nightmare

"Tony Abbott has won the Australian election in a landslide, and vows to abolish the carbon tax as a first order of business. Abbott has declared Australia is 'once more open for business' in claiming victory in Saturday’s election. It is a huge blow to the Rudd-Gillard labor party and their green goals, which were built on a lie foisted on the Australian people. In 2010 when Gillard said 'no carbon tax' in a videotaped speech that has been seen as the key moment Australians lost trust. Then, shortly after she was elected prime minister, she acted as if those words were never spoken, and implemented a carbon tax anyway." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingAustralia liberated from their long national green nightmare

Billionaire: Part-Timers Will Near 50% of Workforce Due to ObamaCare

"On the McLaughlin Group this weekend, Mort Zuckerman, real estate billionaire and owner of the New York Daily News and of U.S. News & World Report stated: 'Part-time employment is going to grow from 25 percent of the workforce to close to 50 percent of the workforce in part because of the problems of healthcare obligations.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBillionaire: Part-Timers Will Near 50% of Workforce Due to ObamaCare

Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year

"A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 60 per cent. The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013. Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century – a process that would expose computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously misleading." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingRecord return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year

Nigel Farage offers Barroso some cooling news on euro and climate change

"The euro which you believed would give us monetary stability has done the very opposite, it was a misconstruction from the start, and it's pretty clear that youth unemployment, at nearly 50% across the Mediterranean, is probably nearly double what it would have been as a direct result of the misconstruction that is the euro. They're in the wrong currency, but I know that you'll never ever admit to that, and the euro I think will die a very slow and painful death. But it's the green agenda that I find really more interesting. You keep telling us that climate change is an absolute top priority, and you've been greeted with almost hysteria in this place over the last ten years." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNigel Farage offers Barroso some cooling news on euro and climate change

Czech communists to return in office for first time since 1989

"Many people associate the Communists to 41 years of repression. But by being out of power for so long, the party has escaped the taint of sleaze that has tarnished the governments that took over from it. Sobotka added that if his party formed a government, its economic policy would be more leftist than the previous centre-right coalition government, with plans to raise taxes for the biggest corporations and for high earners. Jiří Stránský, a dissident writer imprisoned under Communist rule, said he believed today's Communists were dangerous populists. 'I am saddened that after nearly 24 years the country has ended this way, when we started out so amazingly,' he said." Continue reading →

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Belgium’s finance minister has no objection to bitcoin

"Minister of finance Koen Geens responded to a parliamentary question about bitcoin, commenting that he wouldn’t see the Belgian National bank having any objection to bitcoin, and stating that for the moment its use is limited to a handful of traders. Geens reportedly added that although privacy and anonymity were a big part of bitcoin, there was no indication that the cryptocurrency is used on a large scale for money laundering. Any exchange of large amounts of bitcoin would be detected by the financial control systems, he argued. Germany made its own advances in this area last month, when its own finance ministry officially recognized bitcoin as private money." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBelgium’s finance minister has no objection to bitcoin