LAPD cops attack bicyclists at Hollywood Critical Mass

At a Critical Mass in Hollywood, a rider stopped to record police abusing bicyclists.

At 0:25 a police officer can be seen deliberately kicking hard as a bicyclist goes past, apparently trying to knock him off his bike. After the cameraman shouted, "Oh, oh, oh! What the $%^& was that for?", the police came across the street and tackled the cameraman.



The LAPD is investigating.

Government-funded KPBS sends liberal arts major to cover science story; hilarity ensues

Your state-funded media at work promoting a cancer panic in Carlsbad:

Well, there have been 265 reported cases of cancer within a three-mile radius in Carlsbad. Fifteen children have been diagnosed with cancer; four of them have died within a particular neighborhood. At Kelly Elementary School in Carlsbad, several teachers have been diagnosed with cancer. Several more have had infertility problems and some of the fifteen children that I described for you, they attended Kelly Elementary School at one time. So people are worried. They believe that something in the soil, the air, or the water might be making them sick.

265 cancer cases in a three-mile radius? OK, so what's the population within that three-mile radius and what's the expected cancer rate for that population? KPBS "reporter" Amita Sharma didn't think to ask!

Now one – the parents of one of the children who died recently, Chase Quartarone, said that an autopsy was done of him after he died and that there were very high levels of metals found in his system. That he had something like 98% mercury in his system as well as 96% titanium.

He was 194% mercury and titanium? Mmmmkay.

Amita Sharma has degrees in "journalism" and "international relations" from USC.

This is, of course, the same state-funded organization that smeared Tea Parties with the feature "Are Tea Partiers Hate Groups [sic]?"

HT: Jim the Realtor

How to save at-risk youth

Get them out of the greedy grasp of the filthy teachers' unions.

The WSJ tells a story of two Oklahoma City youths in the same poor, Hispanic neighborhood, one of whom was stuck in a union school and has no college plans upon graduation. The other, who escaped to a charter school, won a scholarship to the University of Oklahoma despite having flirted with gangs and drugs in middle school.

The vignettes are backed up by statistics:

Out of 71 seniors at [charter school] Santa Fe South, 62 will attend a four-year university, two-year college or vocational school in the fall.

At the union school?

[...] about 50 of the 147 graduating seniors will enter a vocational school or college in the fall.

Regrets, I've had a few

Obama doesn't care about black people

I think it's safe to say that if an oil well blew up near his Harvard buddies' homes in the Northeast, Obama would have been all over it.

Where's Kanye West?

Richard Wiggins trashes gold in Barron's

In this weekend's Barron's, Richard Wiggins of First Michigan Bank (a bank buying up failed banks from the FDIC) trots out the usual anti-gold arguments.

I'll quote and respond to the key points.

Gold may be the "currency of last resort," but premiums on gold coins have soared to levels never before seen. One-ounce coins are now trading far above their bullion value, as people continue to chase them, and mints worldwide are unable to keep up with demand.

Wrong. Premiums at my local coin shop are still $50 - $60 over spot. Given gold's rising price, that's a 4% or 5% premium, much lower in percentage terms than it was a few years ago when the dollar premiums were the same but spot was a third lower. Reports of Greeks paying $1700 an ounce are entirely a local phenomenon, and only illustrate that you want to buy gold before the panic, not during the panic.

Even gold bulls you may have seen on CNBC or Bloomberg will admit that there is a $200-$300 premium in gold because of ETF gold funds.

This is an asinine argument. Some people prefer to hold physical gold, some use futures, and some use ETFs. The same thing is true of stocks and bonds. Is there an irrational premium in stocks because a lot of people hold them through ETFs?

But gold is a special commodity. Virtually every ounce ever mined -- whether for use in jewelry or anything else -- is still around. It doesn't rust or decay, and we keep mining more each year. It's not like oil, which we use up.

But land is a special commodity. Virtually every square foot ever discovered -- whether for use in agriculture, industry, or residential -- is still around. We can even create more each year, as with Dubai islands and Japanese airport islands. It's not like oil, which we use up. Permanence does not imply worthlessness.

Another part of the logic for gold-that whole flight-to-safety thing -- doesn't exist anymore. Maybe once upon a time, gold was a handy way to buy passage out of an oppressive country, but not anymore. When everybody obsessed about gold, and it was highlighted as a great doomsday hedge against inflation and currency risk, financial futures didn't exist.

Excuse me? With Greece in collapse and the United States at unprecedented total debt-to-GDP levels, suddenly there's no more reason to fear oppressive or confiscatory governments? Only two years ago, Hank Paulson threatened Congress with martial law and a total collapse of the financial system if he didn't get his bailouts, but now we're supposed to believe everything is so stable that we can trust our lives to Wall Street financial futures?

[...] gold is a third-rate safe haven: It pays no interest and costs money to insure. (Textbooks say it has a "positive cost to carry.")

It pays no interest? Anybody check out the interest rates on Zimbabwe Ben dollars lately? What's the difference? As for costing money to insure, safe deposit boxes generally available for free to bank customers can hold plenty of gold. If you don't trust your local bank, you can bury some deep in your backyard or leave some with trusted relatives overseas.

The big argument for gold is that all of the money that the Federal Reserve is printing -- 18 years of easy money -- will come back to haunt us at some time when inflation comes roaring back. Yet if today's investors are worried about U.S. inflation, they can go out and sell T-bonds, or buy the euro or another currency and earn interest while they're doing it. Investors afraid of 1970s-style inflation also should be buying Treasury inflation-protected securities.

Shorting T-bonds relies on the same financial system we were warned was on the verge of collapse just two years ago, and none of the structural problems have been addressed since then. Buying the Euro or other currencies? Hilarious -- as if the U.S. is the only country printing money! Treasury inflation-protected securities? They use the CPI, which the government can manipulate at will.

Gold is just another fiat currency. The only reason gold is valuable is that we believe it is valuable. Ultimately, this gold bubble ends in tears. When and how far gold's price will decline is anyone's guess, but a smart bet is "sooner rather than later."

The dollar is just another fiat currency. The only reason the dollar is valuable is that we believe it is valuable. Gold would be as worthless as dollars except for one thing: scarcity. The difference between gold and the dollar is that a limited quantity of gold exists (both mined and waiting to be mined), while the Federal Reserve's ability to create dollars out of thin air is absolutely unlimited. Ultimately, this dollar bubble ends in tears. When and how far the dollar's price will decline is anyone's guess, but a smart bet is "sooner rather than later."

I'm not saying gold won't be volatile. In fact, I'd love to see a decline below $1000 which I'd use to load up more. But in the long run, with no end in sight to America's insane fiscal and monetary policy, betting on a dollar decline looks like more of a sure thing than a gold decline.

You've lost that tingly feeling

Chrissy "Tingly Pants" Matthews is falling out of love: