(via learnliberty)

(via conza)

Lawrence O’Donnell (via eltigrechico)

The video of Lawrence O’Donnell is about as ‘propaganda’ and ‘there are no Americans in Baghdad’ as it gets. 

‘Tanks? These aren’t tanks!?!??! These are just every day armored vehicles that are exactly like the armored vehicles that we use for war in Iraq/Afghanistan and all they did is help armored officers in full body armor and fully automatic rifles illegally search house. That’s all!

(via michaelangerlo)

(via anti-propaganda)

H.L. Mencken  (via eltigrechico)

Accurate. 

(via eltigrechico)

Congressman Collin Peterson, via NPR’s Planet Money: The Lolipop War

If you’ve ever wondered why nothing has real sugar in it anymore or why candy companies are outsourcing production to other countries, listen to this story from NPR. 

Peterson thinks that eliminating sugar subsidies and the artificial price floor that Congress has voted for is a good thing because it helps keep sugar prices high enough to make sugar production in America possible. Peterson, by the way, was on the House Agriculture Committee, who is in charge of granting such entitlements to sugar farmers. Peterson also happens to represent a region of the country where 25% of incomes come via sugar farming. 

What Peterson fails to recognize is that these sugar price floors might keep sugar farming local or in the country, but they are driving sugar based manufacturers to leave the country. 

We’d be much better off letting our sugar farming industry die off and allow our candy manufacturers to prosper because they can prosper without artificial intervention by a government. Sugar in America, without continued support by the government will ultimate fail, and with it, also. 

No one around the world will buy our sugar because it’s too expensive, so our sugar production relies on manufacturers in the states to buy the sugar. But the cost and the alternative costs make it so manufacturers can’t remain competitive in the global market so they will either only manufacture in the states for state-side sales and more global production out of the country, that’s the best case scenario, or they will move their entire production process to a place that allows them to buy goods at market prices. 

Eventually most if not all these companies will move to where costs are lower and the sugar industry will see very low sales, mainly to local producers only and will either need subsidies to survive or they will close their doors. 

This is a Krugman fantasy and an economic nightmare for the rest of us where we would be literally paying sugar farmers to grow crops that no one will use. Digging holes and filling them back in, if you will. 

Politicians, like Peterson, who only look out for their local constituents without thinking about the overall economic impact, especially when they have power to create laws, as Peterson did, are the most toxic kind of legislators. They are selling off our economic viability, one vote at a time.