What is the most corrupting institution in society? Quite simply, it is government, because it controls and distributes more money to more people and institutions than any other single entity and it has the power to coerce and punish or reward that dwarfs what any private party might be capable of doing.

The political class and the media decry the growth of lobbyists in Washington. Yet why is it so hard to understand that as government increasingly gives away more money and dispenses more favors, it attracts greater numbers looking for those benefits?

The Obama administration, despite claims of caring about the poor, has initiated a series of policies — higher taxes and more regulation — that guarantee a huge increase in those dependent on government. Who has a vested interest in more people being dependent? As the old saying goes, any politician who promises to tax Peter to give to Paul will always have the support of Paul.

I wouldn't think it would be worthwhile to draw attention to the Occupy Wall Street "movement," or its list of demands that wouldn't pass muster in an average kindergarten class.

But President Obama sees these demonstrations against corporate America as reasonable protest toward "the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to crack down on abusive practices that got us into this situation to begin with."

This should provide perspective to what our most fundamental problem is today.

We have an endangered species in America whose loss threatens our future. That species is...

On Friday evening, a tall, bespectacled 30-ish Englishman, Matthew Elliott, escorted Lady Margaret Thatcher into a reception at London's 800-year-old Guild Hall. Despite the fact that England is going through its worst economic crisis since Mrs. Thatcher became prime minister more than three decades ago, she was of good cheer as she conversed with those of us who had come to pay our respects. Perhaps a reason for her upbeat manner was that the ideas she (and Ronald Reagan in the United States) championed are once again gaining currency.

If a Republican wins in 2012, and if the economy doesn't markedly improve by 2016, a Democrat (quite possibly Hillary) will almost certainly win in 2016.

What would it take for the economy to markedly improve by 2016? To understand that, one needs to understand elementary classical (Austrian) economics. The fundamental problem is that governments, both in the US and around the world, have politically misallocated tens of trillions of dollars of capital to economically lower valued uses because these uses were of higher political value.

Wasting so much seed corn year after year, decade after decade, has inevitably resulted in progressively leaner harvests.

Unfortunately, this extensive capital misallocation is being done by many different methods and the misallocated capital is going to many politically favored groups, so there is no one silver bullet that will fix the mess. A partial list:

If a medical doctor prescribed a treatment for a patient that only worked in theory, and the patient did not get better, the doctor could rightly be sued for medical malpractice if tried-and-true cures were known. When members of Congress and a president engage in economic malpractice, the patient's (i.e., the American public's) only recourse is to vote them out of office.

The Obama administration claimed that the unemployment rate would not go above 8 percent and that both the economy and job growth would be strong by this time if Congress passed the "stimulus" bill. Instead, the economy is barely growing, and the unemployment rate is rising.

How did they get it so wrong?

Since Governor Scott Walker signed the Budget Reform Bill, limiting collective bargaining for state employees to wages only on March 11, Wisconsin school districts and cities have been rescuing their budgets.  No longer, for example, were the districts forced to purchase health insurance from the teachers' union insurance company (WEA Trust Insurance) at exorbitant rates.  The savings have been substantial (all figures and quotes compiled from local news reports):

Ashland  School District - saved $378,000 on health insurance.

Kimberly School District - saved $821,000 by dropping WEA Trust Insurance.

Edgerton School District - dropping WEA Trust, expecting to save at least $500,000.

Pittsville - will see a 9%  decrease in the school portion of their property tax levy. "This is the first  year we have not needed to short-term borrow," stated Board President  Strenn.

Appleton School District - will save $3.1 million just in health  insurance costs due to being able to bid out the coverage and being able to  drop WEA Trust.

Have you noticed that many in the political class are absolutely shameless in trying to protect themselves and their colleagues from legitimate inquiry into their activities? For instance, Congress has passed a number of whistle-blower statutes, including the "financial-reform bill," to protect government and private-sector employees from retaliation when reporting the misdeeds of their superiors. Yet, the staff of members of Congress - precisely the people who are most likely to know about political corruption - enjoy no such protection.

Congress, under the guise of "campaign-finance reform," has repeatedly tried to find constitutional ways of limiting the free speech of real and potential opponents. What is even more remarkable, some members of Congress are not content with just trying to protect themselves, but have gone so far as to try to protect corrupt foreign leaders from those who may wish to expose their wrongdoing.

The product of a long -term relentless indoctrination in the progressive radical school, President Obama has never varied from his life mission.

Yes, a portion of Americans absorbed the staccato of the "One" , the chant of "change we can believe in" and the seduction of the healer. Many simply "wanted" to believe in something that never existed. It was a mirage. An imagery and technique right out the text book of tyrants from across the ages.

However the truth was always there for all to see. The only surprise is they didn't.

Now as the Obama Presidency is in free fall, the gesture and notions of accommodation are being fully discarded. Now the creation of imagined enemies and emasculation of the virtues that made this country great be it free enterprise, individual rights, or capitalism are laid out as evil in the quest for that fool's gold of the left:  "fairness".

This twisted logic is at the fraudulent core of the soul of socialism. It is a primary mover of their mania and a mantra which overshadows each act.

Wasn't that just the greatest State of the Union speech ever?  All that pent-up expectation that Zero was going to channel Bill Clinton as The Comeback Kid pivoting off the humiliation of facing a newly-elected Republican Majority to join them in declaring "The era of big government is over" - well, he certainly burst that balloon, didn't he?

What a turkey of a talk - so bad it may be right up there with Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech.  It's being ridiculed as his Sputnik Speech for his stupid "Sputnik moment" shtick, and his WTF Speech for his witless "Winning The Future" slogan that deserved the acronym everyone knows has another meaning.

The HFR prefers to entitle Zero's 2011 SOTU - in honor of his paean to "solar shingles" as an example of "tomorrow's energy" as opposed to "yesterday's energy" of filthy hydrocarbons - as his Solar On A Shingle Speech.

Even better, he phoned it in.  It was a going-through-the-motions, desultory, listless performance with no fire.  "I struggled to keep my eyes open, Jack," one Congressman told me.  "He droned on and on, blathering about what he wants when he knows there's not the slightest chance we'll vote it.  He even said he wants us to revive the dead DREAM Act!  What a space cadet... we're all calling him President Sputnik now."

A sweetheart deal between a corrupt French president and Saudi Arabia has hurt the U.S. defense industry.

Former French President Jacques Chirac (1995-2007) is almost certain to be accused of overcharging Saudi Arabia for French military equipment. The Saudis overpaid for 100 French military helicopters through a deal worked out by a Saudi fixer, Khalid Bugshan of the Bugshan Group. The overpayments apparently were spread liberally to French politicians.

The trial is likely to provide at least a partial open window to some of the corrupt practices in international arms dealings. Khalid Bugshan and his group had their agreement with the French, and their contacts included French government officials and some in the inner circle of the Saudi ruling family. One of the interesting questions is: “How much did the Saudi ruling family know about the overpricing - or was Bugshan primarily running a rogue operation?”

If the Saudi royal family knew, were they doing it to purchase political influence and/or tilt French foreign policy?