Its good to be friends with The One – from The New York Times:

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion…

How is this done? Because GE is such a gigantic corporation, they can afford the army of lawyers, tax experts and lobbyists which allow them to dodge America’s high corporate tax rate. By massaging the government with money and perks, GE has managed to screw the American people, rake in vast profits on overseas enterprises and not pay any taxes. Meanwhile, small and mid-sized firms – which make all or most of their profits in the United States – lack these resources and so are forced to bear the burden, thus limiting the ability of the domestic economy to grow and provide jobs. GE’s success is the product of the union of Big Corporation with Big Government…and GE’s boss – Immelt – becoming a top Obama economic adviser just demonstrates what has really been going on.

So it has been for about 100 years now – even back in the days of the trust-busting Theodore Roosevelt, laws, taxes and regulations were being written by Big Government types (and the “Progressives” of the early 20th century were in favor of Big Government, just as today’s progressives are) in order to favor Big Corporation. By increasing the regulatory and tax cost of doing business in the United States we have progressively (and that is a very apt word here) made it harder and harder for regular folks to engage in business. We’ve essentially frozen out the man with an idea and a dream and made the world safe for the guy with a business degree and solid, political connections.

In order to really fix what is wrong with America the “Bigs” have to go – both Big Government and Big Corporation. Though the emphasis must remain on curbing government – which will, in and of itself, lower the ability of Big Corporation to twist things around – we must give time and thought to how we ensure a level playing field in a genuinely free market. Tax rates must be reviewed to determine if they are really for revenue, or just for harming competitors; regulations must be reviewed to determine if they really meet a public need, or if they are just part of an inside deal to favor some group. All persons must be able to enter the market place in the time and manner of their choosing without having an onerous burden of taxes and regulations placed upon them. With all due heed to healthy, safety and reasonable environmental concerns, the path to a start-up should be wide and open.

From the Des Moines Register:

Foes of illegal immigration are up in arms over plans for a weekend disaster exercise in western Iowa with a fictitious scenario in which young white supremacists shoot dozens of people amid rising tensions involving racial minorities and illegal immigrants.

The exercise is planned for Saturday at Treynor High School in Pottawattamie County and will involve more than 300 people, confirmed Doug Reed, the lead exercise planner for the county’s emergency management agency. Some 30 to 40 “victims” will be transported to area hospitals. He said a terrorism scenario is required by federal officials for the exercise to be eligible for funding…

Why not have a exercise where Islamists attack? Because to do so would be both relevant and true – and liberalism cannot do that. And for two reasons:

1. Islamist front groups in the United States would have a fit, and a host of lawyers and pressure groups would immediately start demonstrations and file lawsuits, thus spiking the drill and jeopardizing the federal swag.

2. For liberals the threat is always from white, male Christians who own guns. It doesn’t matter what else is going on – we are always on the verge of going on a murderous rampage as our inherent racism and violence bubbles to the surface. To liberals, the Islamists – even if they are really a threat – pale in comparison to what white, male Christians are always just about to do. Gotta be prepared for the day when the TEA Party activists take the mask off and just start killing everyone.

In itself, this drill is just asinine. It should be opposed, of course, and it is to be hoped that the publicity now surrounding it will kill it, or at least make everyone more wary of doing a repeat. But as an illustration of what we’re up against, this is invaluable. This is how we’re viewed – the left hates us with a white-hot passion and simply cannot let it go. This is why their nastiness comes so swiftly to the surface…they have so endlessly talked themselves in to really believing that we’re all racists and fascists that they don’t even live in reality.

Remember this as we go in to political battle with the left – they will not quit and they will never, ever accord us respect. All they do is designed to defeat us, even if part of the plan becomes a tactical retreat. Unless we completely uproot them from power and influence they will eventually completely uproot us.

I’m a Christian – specifically, of course, a Catholic Christian. As such I hold that homosexual acts are inherently disordered and can never be considered licit. But here’s the difference – I and the rest of my Christian brothers and sisters will not deny the right of homosexuals to live as they please. We are free – and that means free to do wrong things. As G. K. Chesterton put it:

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

The gay man owns himself – if he chooses to engage in behavior which puts at risk both his health and his immortal soul, then that is his choice…his decision. He will bear all the consequences of his decisions before God. The problem with Islam is that in their search for virtue, all they’ve done is create a society of dogs – whipped dogs who don’t dare stir from the kennels. The problem here in the West is similar – our whipped dogs are the liberals, who have so shackled themselves to a series of lies (in this case, most notably, the insane, politically correct concept that no society is better than any other) that they, also, don’t dare stir…and so we have Islamists demanding that everyone be put in to a moral straight jacket, while liberals refuse to call them on it because to do so is to assert – correctly – that our society is better.

Those of us who are neither Islamist nor liberal are the only people who can set things right – who can both instruct liberals in the truth of our society as well as instruct the Islamists that you can be morally good without resort to a whip. Our problem is that we are caught between two fires – we must both defend morality against western liberalism while also defending liberty against Islamist tyrants. A difficult task, to be sure, and we cannot tell if we’ll be able to do it.

From ABC:

Just over ten months before next February’s Iowa caucuses Sarah Palin is returning from a recent trip to Israel. But Tea Party darling Rep. Michele Bachmann is already hitting the Hawkeye state capital.

Unlike Palin, all signs point to Bachmann running for the Republican presidential nomination later this year. In an Iowa version of ABC News’ “Subway Series” shot on the Des Moines city trolley, the Minnesota Republican told ABC’s Jonathan Karl, “I’m in.”

Well, sort of.

“I’m in for 2012 in that I want to be a part of the conversation in making sure that President Obama only serves one term, not two, because I want to make sure that we get someone who’s going to be making the country work again. That’s what I’m in for,” Bachmann said…

To translate from the politician, “I really, really want to run, but before I go putting myself out there as an official candidate, I want to raise some money, raise my national profile and do some polling to see if I’ve got a chance…”. If you want to bet, then bet she throws her hat in to the ring.

Now, does she have a chance? Not much. House members tend to lack the “oomph” necessary to win a major party nomination. They often don’t even have full name recognition their home States, let alone name recognition around the country (I bet that not 4 in 10 Americans could identify who the Speaker of the House is…for a back bencher like Bachmann, though a darling to the right, it would be less than 1 in 10). It is an extraordinary uphill climb for Bachmann to even become competitive in Iowa and New Hampshire, though she is helped in Iowa by her roots in that State, and she does represent neighboring Minnesota. For Bachmann to really have a shot, she’s going to have to do it entirely by retail…she’s going to have to stump from one end of Iowa to the other and then duplicate that in New Hampshire.

That can be done – but it takes enormous dedication and discipline. Essentially, from now until next January, she’ll have to do pretty much nothing but campaign. And that, on the other hand, puts her at risk of becoming stale in both States – allowing someone else to rush in late and scoop up her voters (which does make me think she might be a stalking horse for Sarah Palin). The one thing to keep in mind for 2012, however, is the fact that while someone like Bachmann doesn’t have much of a shot, she does have that shot…literally anyone who can put together any sort of credible campaign can catch fire for 2012 and sweep it all. The GOP base is that restive and the American electorate in that revolutionary a mood. So, don’t count anyone out – but don’t sell yourself on any one candidate any time soon.

President says it will be a short engagement…just a bit of bombing and we’re out out of there. Not so fast, says Defense Secretary Gates:

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday there was no “timeline” for when UN-backed military operations in Libya would end, and that the outcome of the conflict remained unclear.

Speaking during a visit to Cairo, Gates said the UN Security Council resolution that authorised a no-fly zone was “not time-limited” and that it was unrealistic to expect military action to be over in a matter of weeks.

“So I think that there is no current timeline in terms of when it might end,” Gates told reporters…

No surprise here. After all, our stated goal is democracy but not getting rid of Gaddafi, though we’d be happy if he were forced out…but its not like we’ll try to kill him, or anything. This is turning in to quite a nightmare…a genuinely aimless military operation being done for who knows what real reason…or perhaps being done for no reason at all, but just because someone in the Administration figured we had to do something.

As you all know, I favor US intervention in Libya – but only if its assist in forcing out Gaddafi. If we’re not doing that – if we’re not acting with a specific, measurable goal – then it is best we shut down the operation as swiftly as possible. If we keep going without a goal then we’ll just be sucked in, step by step, and might be deeply involved in Libyan affairs for a decade or more…and still never get Gaddafi out of power. All the way in, or all the way out…pick a course of action and stick to it to the end. But don’t just fritter away lives and resources in service to an attitude, or to the worthless United Nations.

Its really just a government bubble – from SBS:

Vast new cities of apartments and shops are being built across China at a rate of ten a year, but they remain almost completely uninhabited ghost towns.

It’s all part of the government’s efforts to keep the economy booming, and there are many people who would love to move in, but it’s simply too expensive for most.

Video journalist Adrian Brown wanders through malls of vacant shops, and roads lined with empty apartment buildings… 64 million apartments are said to be empty across the country and one of the few shop owners says he once didn’t sell anything for four or five days.

Click here for the video report. It is a must-see report – not because it shows the whole truth (no short, video presentation can) but because the truth of China is only slowly dribbling out…most “experts” are still talking up China’s growth as if it is real. It isn’t – it is a fraud; the Chinese government has built up a gangster economy in which a select few are allowed to rob the people of China (and foolish western investors) to their heart’s content as long as they provide swag for the Ruling Class and, of course, agree to the continued repression of the Chinese people.

The most telling quote in the piece is where it is noted that if the Chinese government sets a GDP growth target, the lower level officials will make it happen – regardless of whether or not there is any economic sense. This will come crashing down – you can’t actually do this. You can’t command an economy to prosper…and the people of China are noticing that a very few are getting fabulously wealthy while most Chinese continue on in poverty, a lot of it quite grinding.

Here’s the really bad news – a lot of large, western banks are deeply invested in China, and when China goes down, they go down with it…and take us with them.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

And here’s why – from Inside Higher Ed:

…The first, which was reported favorably by the Appropriations Committee to the House, would bar any public union from automatically deducting dues from members’ paychecks. Specifically, the language of the bill would bar deductions for dues that fund an employee organization or its political activity. The measure also would require unions to get written authorization, each fiscal year, from members to use their money. Unions would, moreover, have to produce reports detailing their revenues and expenses over the preceding 24 months…

Unions will fight this tooth and nail because it cuts in to their main function – money laundering for the Democrat political campaigns. Essentially, the unions are just slush funds for politics…collective bargaining takes a gigantic back seat to providing the funds to elect Democrats who will expand the size of government, thus expanding the number of dues-paying union members, thus providing more funds to elect Democrats, ad-nauseum. This is what it really is all about – don’t buy stories about “workers rights” or other such nonsense…this is about raw, political power and the money necessary to secure it.

On its merits, the law must be enacted – before any group proposes to speak for a person, that group must first obtain permission…and getting it in writing is just the best and most secure means of doing so. If you don’t get permission, you can’t act on that person’s behalf, period. This is a very American act – it holds, per the principles of our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that the individual must be allowed to govern himself…and those who would act in place of a person must do so only by consent.

These are the sorts of laws we need to de-fund the left and restore American constitutional government – and I hope more and more States and localities will follow suit.

…then why is the use of petroleum distillates 13% lower in Q1 2011 than in Q1 2007?

As I keep saying about everything – never pay attention to what people are saying, look at what they are doing. Right now, people are buying a lot less gasoline and other petroleum products…that isn’t what would be happening if the economy was really in recovery.

From National Journal:

The pace of new home sales plummeted to a record low last month, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday in a further sign that the battered housing market is only slumping further.

Sales fell 16.9 percent from January, delivering a shock to analysts who had expected a gain for last month. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of 250,000 homes sold marks the slowest pace recorded since the data series began in the 1960s…

How on earth could anyone expect a gain in home sales? Oh, I know – the “experts” are all a bunch of dimwits who just do what Bernanke says…he says the economy is getting better so they “expect” home sale so to rise. The same experts are now telling us that rising gasoline prices won’t be a problem for the US economy.

Our choices are:

1. Fire up the printing presses and shove through another “stimulus” package. This will get us two or three quarters of “growth”…and finish bankrupting the nation, leading to complete economic collapse.

2. Just stop the nonsense. Let things fall to their real value and then enact policies which allow us to start making, mining and growing more of our own stuff. This will be painful, but we’ll be out of the mess in two or three years.

What will Obama do? Hard to say – baseball season is heading our way and he might be trying to figure out who will win the pennant.