Financial Regulation Bill is Socialism

Financial Regulation Bill is Socialism
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Saturday, May 22, 2010

President Obama has taken the United States one more giant step toward socialism by ramming through the Senate his financial regulation bill.

The bill authorizes the secretary of the treasury -- a political appointee -- to seize any financial company (bank or non-bank) simply because, in his opinion, it is too big to fail and in danger of insolvency. This power can be used for political retribution, pressure for campaign funding or any other abuse that bureaucratic whim or partisan politics can conceive. It is a power Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez would love to have!

The legislation also requires that any business that extends credit, in any form, needs to clear the loan instrument in advance with the new consumer protection agency. The backlog of pending applications will strangle consumer credit.

And the bill fails to do the one thing it must do: regulate derivatives and make them transparent. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., bowed to pressure from his sponsors on Wall Street and deleted the regulatory provision and set up a commission to study the situation for two years! Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., protested the cop-out with a no vote against the legislation.

So how did it pass? Four Republicans sold out, that's how! Among the RINOs were, of course, Susan Collins and Olympia Snow of Maine. But, surprisingly, Scott Brown, R-Mass., the newly elected Massachusetts Miracle, defected, as did the normally stalwart Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Now the federal government has effectively taken over about one third of our national economy by passing Obamacare and regulatory reform in almost the same breath.

Repealing this regulatory travesty must be high on our 2011 agenda!
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The President Says You've Got Enough Money
Dan Kennedy
Saturday, May 22, 2010

In a recent speech, President Obama declared, “at some point, I think you’ve got enough money.” And it’s what he thinks, not what you think, that matters. That goes double for what he thanks about your money.

There lies – bare as can be – the irrefutable evidence of the president’s true ideology (socialism or worse) and of just how serious a threat he is to this nation.

The only things yet to be determined are:

1. What is that point at which you’ve got enough money and should have the overage confiscated?
2. Are there different points for different people? (I’m betting there are.)

To my knowledge, no one in the media has demanded he state the number.

The president and his wife made $5.5 million this past year, which the media claims came mostly from book royalties – which were made possible by free advertising for the books by his presidential campaign, which was funded by donors, including the evil CEO of Goldman Sachs, and now by the presidency itself. He donated his Nobel Prize award, plus about 6 percent of his earned income to charities. Not a staggering percentage by any means. A great many Americans tithe 10 percent.

Presumably, after those donations, and taxes, the Obamas kept about $3 million or so, and they’re living rent-free in Washington, and will in as short a time as four years, gain a lifetime pension. (Perhaps Michelle is proud of her country now?)

Good news, I guess: we might hope that earning $3 million will not be the point at which Obama decides you’ve got enough money. Unless the point at which you’ve got too much is different from the point at which he’s got too much. Again, I’ll bet it is.

But it would seem a good guess that somebody who is making an income – or has stacked up a fortune – five or ten times that much would be deemed by Obama as having enough. Thus, the following people should expect the president to single them out as greedy villains any day now:

* Warren Buffett, who recently had 40,000 of his stockholders gather in a vile display of wretched excess. A bunch of them probably have too much money.
* Bill Gates.
* Former presidents, including Clinton.
* Al Gore.
* Athletes like LeBron James and Tiger Woods.
* Entertainers like Sheryl “One Sheet” Crow or the host of this year’s press corps’ banquet, Jay Leno. Maybe even a few of the liberal media elites who were in that audience.

For all these wealth gluttons, I have a suggestion: stop earning any more money for the next two years. Since most of you voted for him anyway, grant the president his wish. Stop.

Withdraw all your money from all investments. Shutter your stores, restaurants, factories, movie studios, banks and financial brokerages. Evict all tenants from your apartment buildings and shopping centers, and board the buildings up. Invent nothing, bring no products to market, write no books and hire no one. Stop adding to your unjust, unfair, beyond-the-point income or wealth. Take a vacation. File next year’s federal, state and local tax returns with big, fat zeroes written on the payment-due lines.

While you’re at it, buy as little as possible too. After all, at other times, the president has indicated he thinks many of us keep our homes too warm or too cool, drive around too much (on under-inflated tires), eat too much salty food, buy ‘Cadillac’ health plans that are too good. He has a point of too much in mind about everything. He is the Decider of your too-much. Everybody at the too-much point could relieve him of a lot of worry by spending nearly nothing for the next two years.

During a conference at which I just spoke, the owner of several companies showed me a pair of cufflinks he’d just had custom-made, engraved with the words “Who Is John Galt?” If the president isn’t familiar with Ayn Rand’s Galt, he might want to read up.

This business owner said the cuff-links were the last item other than absolute necessities that he would buy until Obama was an ex-president. He said he was sending out a letter to the restaurants and shops he patronized, his dry cleaners, the service companies that tended his lawns at his homes – over 200 different business owners – letting them know that President Obama had determined he was making too much money and was too rich for reason. Therefore, he was going to cut sales and production at his companies by half, himself work but one day a week, cut business spending to the bone and personally buy nothing – other than vacations out of the country – until the president exits.