14 Oct 2008
Credit crisis overturns free-market ideology

Oh, please! We've had nothing resembling a free market in this country for over a century - and even then it was fatally tainted.

The corporation is an entity created by the State - in a free market there are no limits to liability on owners. In a free market, the State does not intervene and grant monopolies (think utilities and transportation). In a free market the State does not regulate how you may dispose of or use your property (think zoning and other real estate restrictions). In a free market, the State does not subsidize one group of producers in favor of another (think farm subsidies, tax abatements for new factories/warehouses, etc.)

What we've seen in this country since FDR has more resembled State socialism or fascism than it has the free market. Note the revolving door today betwen Wall Street and the White House and note who's running this "bailout", and where they all used to work, and will work again once the political winds shift.

Perhaps in an Obama presidency we'll at least get our socialism straight up, without the sickening gloss of hypocrisy professing it's undying love for the "free market" while doing everything possible to skew and distort the market in favor of those in power.

The next president will decide whether the shift away from laissez faire is permanent.

(link) [Christian Science Monitor]

19:17 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama

What a "colorful" fellow:

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

And that's apparently enough to get him on Faux News. Especially with Hannity. They have so much in common.

A Fox News Channel program last week thrust Andy Martin, widely credited with starting a cyber-whisper campaign about Barack Obama, into the foreground.

(link) [New York Times]

Update: But wait - there's more.

06:44 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Bush Signs Law Creating Copyright Czar

Just what we don't need.

President Bush signs legislation Monday creating a cabinet-level copyright czar on par with the U.S. drug czar.

(link) [Wired]

06:28 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link