... because GM wants to send a billion bucks of it to Brazil. From the Latin American Herald [with h/t Last Free Voice ]: General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker. According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012." Yeah, as kavips likes to say, Congress Saves The World , huh?

The overall framing concept for Libertarians is the transition from being Inhabitants of a Progressive State back to being Citizens of the American Nation Part One: The Progressive State The Progressive State is • Paternalistic • Imperialistic • Monopolistic Therefore, the Progressive State represents an attempt to convert the American Nation into a hydraulic empire. Once the State owns or controls the means of production and redistribution of wealth, legitimizes the use of force to pursue a particular ideology, and maintains a military posture sufficient to keep strategic threats to its territorial integrity from appearing…. That State has rendered itself effectively immortal. The State may be considered Paternalistic if • The State utilizes its power to insist on an ideological indoctrination focused on the elimination of most differences of status, wealth, and education, with the exception of that provided to an elite few who emerge as the managerial/ruling class. • The State there...

Master Sergeant Donald F. Kampe, USMC, reads this blog, and I am damn proud of that. We disagree on lots of things, especially foreign policy in general and Iraq in specific. I'd venture to say that he is where I was several years ago (intellectually but not geographically speaking), there is probably room for movement on both sides. Here are a few snippets of what Don has written to me: Damn, I miss the Articles of Confederation as well!!! I just got done reading a John Stossel piece and it reminded me about how in the movie the patriot Marin said that 3000 men 1 mile away could trample a man's rights just as well as 1 man 3000 miles away. That started me on the train of thought that we have now pushed the presidency to the point of he is King and can solve all and rules all. Seems to me that I read somewhere that some people called that a long time ago, that if the Constitution were passed that it would come to where we are now. Those being the Anti-Federalist. Scary...

Go here and watch for just 29 seconds. This also explains why I am not even remotely a Republican, and why Libertarians cannot afford to engage with the GOP.

... for my friends who think law enforcement has enough accountability and not enough power. JD at Disloyal Opposition chronicles what is beginning to appear as a nationwide police war on dogs : In Park Forest, Illinois, police investigating a burglary entered the yard of the Walker family with a police dog in tow. Princess, the Walker's German shepherd-pit bull mix, apparently smelled the police canine on the other side of the door and scratched to be let out. Thinking the dog needed to answer a call of nature, the Walkers' 10-year-old son opened the door, at which point Princess ran to investigate the intruders. One of the officers promptly shot the dog with his service revolver. You really need to read the whole thing, painful as it is. Then you need to think about how we have created a society in which certain individuals with guns are somehow quite often not answerable for their actions, and lobby hard to keep ordinary citizens as poorly armed as possible. Here's a si...

This from the Coyote : The Town of South Attleboro, MA sent out wildly threatening past due letters for folks with balances as low as 1-cent (thereby investing at least 42 cents to get one back). In response to charges that this was stupid, City Collector Debora Marcoccio responded: A computer automatically printed the letters for any account with a balance remaining, and they were not reviewed by staff before being sent out, Marcoccio said. "It would be fiscally irresponsible for me to have staff weed through the bills and pull out any below a certain amount," Marcoccio said. " And what would that amount be?" What, are we living in the 19th century with clerks in a musty room preparing bills by hand? This fix probably requires one whole entire line of program code in the billing system to fix. I could probably teach myself to code whatever language the payroll system is written in (my guess is COBOL, which, god help me, I already know) in less time than this wo...

... even though he is a Statist former lobbyist whose ideas could ruin the healthcare system. The reason is this: Barack Obama won the damn election . And he won the election, based in part on the promises he made about universal healthcare. So to expect him to do otherwise than appoint a long-term liberal/progressive [who happens to have also been a long-term supporter] who thinks exactly like he does on healthcare is neither surprising nor deserving of condemnation. There was neither a rational political nor a significant moral reason for him to do otherwise. The discourse at this point necessarily changes to winning the public argument over healthcare based on the merits of particular legislation or public policy. It's decisions like potentially placing pro-torture appointees into Homeland Security positions or an advocate of extending the Patriot Act as Attorney General for which the President-elect can legitimately be criticized--as these appointments dramatically conflict w...