Cheap Political Theater
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Death threats to executives at AIG, because of the bonuses they received, are one more sign of the utter degeneration of politics in our time.
Congressman Barney Frank has threatened to summon these executives before his committee and force them to reveal their home addresses-- which would of course put their wives and children at the mercy of whatever kooks might want to literally take a shot at them.
Whatever the political or economic issues involved, this is not the way such issues should be resolved in America. We are not yet a banana republic, though that is the direction in which some of our politicians are taking us-- especially those politicians who make a lot of noise about "compassion" and "social justice."
What makes this all the more painfully ironic is that it is precisely those members of Congress who have had the most to do with creating the risks that led to the current economic crisis who are making the most noise against others, and summoning people before their committee to be browbeaten and humiliated on nationwide television.
No one pushed harder than Congressman Barney Frank to force banks and other financial institutions to reduce their mortgage lending standards, in order to meet government-set goals for more home ownership. Those lower mortgage lending standards are at the heart of the increased riskiness of the mortgage market and of the collapse of Wall Street securities based on those risky mortgages.
Senator Christopher Dodd has played the same role in the Senate as Barney Frank played in the House of Representatives. Now both are summoning government employees and the officials of financial institutions before their committees to be lambasted in front of the media.
Dodd and Frank know that the best defense is a good offense. Both know how hard it would be to defend their own roles in the housing debacle, so they go on the offensive against others who are in no position to reply in kind, given the vindictive powers of Congress.
This political theater is in one sense cheap beyond words. In another sense, it is costly beyond words.
It is cheap because the politicians who are creating this distraction from their own role also voted for the very legislation that enabled contracted bonuses to be paid by companies like AIG that received government bailout money. If members of Congress can't be bothered to read the laws they pass, then they have no basis for whipping up lynch mob outrage against people who did read the law and acted within the law.
Just as everyone seemed to be a military expert a couple of years ago, when it was chic to say that the "surge" in Iraq would not work, so today everyone seems to be an expert on executive pay.
Whether the particular executives who received bonuses were the ones responsible for AIG's problems, or were among those who warned against those problems, is something that those of us on the outside don't know. That includes those in politics and the media who are making the loudest noise.
The politicians claim to be protecting the taxpayers' money. But having politicians trying to micro-manage any business is far more likely to make those businesses lose more money, including the taxpayers' money.
Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.
Politicians and bureaucrats micro-managing the mortgage sector of the economy is precisely how today's economic disaster began. Why anyone would think that their micro-managing the automobile industry, or executive pay across a wide sweep of other industries, is likely to make things better in the economy is a mystery.
The real point is to pander to envy and resentment against people who make a lot of money. Envy is always referred to by its political alias, "social justice." But to put the lives of the wives and children of executives at risk for the sake of Beltway grandstanding shows how low our political saviors have sunk.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Off With Their Heads!
Off With Their Heads.
Neal Boortz
Monday, March 23, 2009
This is nuts. I mean, really folks ... we have gone bat-guano insane over this AIG bonus brouhaha. You're being manipulated. The wealth-envy is being stoked. What we have here is a phony outrage wholly generated by the political class to take the minds of the dumb masses (if you're reading aloud, do so slowly) off of the spectacularly irresponsible bailout, stimulus and budget bills that have been passed in recent months. We have an anti-capitalist Democrat party working with a president who thinks that America's greatness is based in government, together with no small number of Republican sycophants, spending this country into oblivion ... and looking for ways to distract your attention in the process.
NO ... I'm not saying that the AIG employees who got these bonuses necessarily earned them. I'm still waiting to meet the man who actually earned every dollar and benefit he has received from his employer. We call him Sully. The Financial Services Division of AIG is a basket case. The fact is, though, AIG had a contractual obligation to pay those bonuses, and failure to do so would have been actionable. A good trial attorney would manage to get double the amount due plus fees. All of the wealth envy and moaning about the evil, disgusting, putrid, worthless rich won't make those contracts void. The decision to pay those bonuses pursuant to the legally enforceable contracts was the right one.
More disgusting than the bonuses, however, is the political reaction to them. If ever there was a time for pitchforks and torches -- this should have been it. Not because of the AIG bonuses ... but because of what transpired in the Congress last week. For the first time that I can remember the Imperial Congress of the United States has passed a law establishing a confiscatory tax to be levied on certain individuals -- not for the purpose of raising revenue -- but strictly for the purpose of punishment. The political class has determined, without the benefit of due process or a trial, that the actions of the AIG employees in accepting these bonuses was a crime, and that crime shall be punished by seizure of the money. Legislation to single out and punish someone without due process is constitutionally forbidden. But who cares? What does the Constitution mean any more anyway?
Saturday night I had to sit meekly, as is my custom, while three fellow CNN panelists blathered on about how these bonuses were paid entirely with bailout funds. Say what? By what magic accounting trick do these rocket surgeons determine that the entire bonuses paid to these AIG so-called "executives" were paid from the very bailout funds that amounted to only nine-hundredths of one percent of the dollar amount of the bonuses paid? Oh, wait! I can answer that myself: It's the same accounting process that causes Chuckie Schumer to declare that "we shouldn't quibble over $200 million dollars" of taxpayer's money spent when the discussion is congressional earmarks, but who then starts spinning around on his eyebrows when a private business fulfills a legal obligation to pay $175 million due pursuant to an enforceable contract.
Thanks to generations of government education, inexorably leading to a populace with only rudimentary thinking skills, most Americans don't readily see the danger in government hosting a popularity contest in which the masses decide who does and who does not deserve to keep what they have earned. Maybe a few news bulletins from the not-so-far future might yank your chain a bit:
"Democrat Congressman Barney (Sylvester) Frank announced today the introduction of legislation calling for a 90% tax on all income in excess of $500,000 paid to any person who foments political dissention on the public's airwaves."
Think about this. If these hacks can use this "public's airwaves" idiocy in order to control what someone says on a radio show, who's to say they couldn't use the same fiction to control income? They control what the radio station can make by limiting commercial minutes and demanding fealty to the "public's interests," so why not extend that control to all on-air personnel? Thank goodness this one wouldn't apply to me. I neither foment dissention nor do I meet the salary cap.
Here's another:
"Speaker Nancy Pelosi dispatched a delegation of flying monkeys this afternoon to deliver a message to the media that she was calling for legislation to establish a 90% tax on all book royalties payable to tall blond women weighing less than 110 pounds."
OK .. got ya to smile. You can come up with your own "punish them with taxes" ideas and put them in the comments section.
The point here is that we have set the precedent whereby is now OK to single out private individuals, demonize them for political advantage, and then march them to the IRS guillotine for a financial beheading. Madam LeFarge for Treasury Secretary. At least she's not a tax cheat.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Neal Boortz
Monday, March 23, 2009
This is nuts. I mean, really folks ... we have gone bat-guano insane over this AIG bonus brouhaha. You're being manipulated. The wealth-envy is being stoked. What we have here is a phony outrage wholly generated by the political class to take the minds of the dumb masses (if you're reading aloud, do so slowly) off of the spectacularly irresponsible bailout, stimulus and budget bills that have been passed in recent months. We have an anti-capitalist Democrat party working with a president who thinks that America's greatness is based in government, together with no small number of Republican sycophants, spending this country into oblivion ... and looking for ways to distract your attention in the process.
NO ... I'm not saying that the AIG employees who got these bonuses necessarily earned them. I'm still waiting to meet the man who actually earned every dollar and benefit he has received from his employer. We call him Sully. The Financial Services Division of AIG is a basket case. The fact is, though, AIG had a contractual obligation to pay those bonuses, and failure to do so would have been actionable. A good trial attorney would manage to get double the amount due plus fees. All of the wealth envy and moaning about the evil, disgusting, putrid, worthless rich won't make those contracts void. The decision to pay those bonuses pursuant to the legally enforceable contracts was the right one.
More disgusting than the bonuses, however, is the political reaction to them. If ever there was a time for pitchforks and torches -- this should have been it. Not because of the AIG bonuses ... but because of what transpired in the Congress last week. For the first time that I can remember the Imperial Congress of the United States has passed a law establishing a confiscatory tax to be levied on certain individuals -- not for the purpose of raising revenue -- but strictly for the purpose of punishment. The political class has determined, without the benefit of due process or a trial, that the actions of the AIG employees in accepting these bonuses was a crime, and that crime shall be punished by seizure of the money. Legislation to single out and punish someone without due process is constitutionally forbidden. But who cares? What does the Constitution mean any more anyway?
Saturday night I had to sit meekly, as is my custom, while three fellow CNN panelists blathered on about how these bonuses were paid entirely with bailout funds. Say what? By what magic accounting trick do these rocket surgeons determine that the entire bonuses paid to these AIG so-called "executives" were paid from the very bailout funds that amounted to only nine-hundredths of one percent of the dollar amount of the bonuses paid? Oh, wait! I can answer that myself: It's the same accounting process that causes Chuckie Schumer to declare that "we shouldn't quibble over $200 million dollars" of taxpayer's money spent when the discussion is congressional earmarks, but who then starts spinning around on his eyebrows when a private business fulfills a legal obligation to pay $175 million due pursuant to an enforceable contract.
Thanks to generations of government education, inexorably leading to a populace with only rudimentary thinking skills, most Americans don't readily see the danger in government hosting a popularity contest in which the masses decide who does and who does not deserve to keep what they have earned. Maybe a few news bulletins from the not-so-far future might yank your chain a bit:
"Democrat Congressman Barney (Sylvester) Frank announced today the introduction of legislation calling for a 90% tax on all income in excess of $500,000 paid to any person who foments political dissention on the public's airwaves."
Think about this. If these hacks can use this "public's airwaves" idiocy in order to control what someone says on a radio show, who's to say they couldn't use the same fiction to control income? They control what the radio station can make by limiting commercial minutes and demanding fealty to the "public's interests," so why not extend that control to all on-air personnel? Thank goodness this one wouldn't apply to me. I neither foment dissention nor do I meet the salary cap.
Here's another:
"Speaker Nancy Pelosi dispatched a delegation of flying monkeys this afternoon to deliver a message to the media that she was calling for legislation to establish a 90% tax on all book royalties payable to tall blond women weighing less than 110 pounds."
OK .. got ya to smile. You can come up with your own "punish them with taxes" ideas and put them in the comments section.
The point here is that we have set the precedent whereby is now OK to single out private individuals, demonize them for political advantage, and then march them to the IRS guillotine for a financial beheading. Madam LeFarge for Treasury Secretary. At least she's not a tax cheat.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Welcome to Green Hell, Where You're All a Bunch of Slaves
Welcome to Green Hell, Where You’re All a Bunch of Slaves.
Doug Giles
Saturday, March 21, 2009
If you thought the global warming climate clowns were bad before Obama ascended to the throne, you ain’t seen nothing yet with our new chartreuse Commander in Chief. Of course Barack, personally or professionally, won’t go green because it’s too “inconvenient” and way too expensive for his gig, but for us serfs schlepping in Obamaland we will have to worship the turf because, you see, we’re murdering the earth. Quit laughing. This is serious. I said quit laughing. The earth is dying, and it ain’t funny.
In PoMo America where bullcrap is alive and well, we’re going to be forced to exchange the worship of God for grass. In Bermuda We Trust. And if we don’t bow and kiss Pelosi and her tribe’s jade ring we could be used as human tiki torches to light her garden. Be afraid, plebeians. Be afraid.
After Obama was ACORNed into the White House, several black hip hop “artists” said that with the election of Barack the White House would soon morph into the Black House. I hate to break it to you, Ludacris, but you’re a day late and a few special interest groups short, as the off-their-frickin’-rocker global warming Gestapo are in line way ahead of you to paint 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue green, dawg. Fo’ shizzle, my nizzle.
Brace yourself, boys and girls, as we’re about to have green shoved up our backsides like never before. Yep, going emerald will soon move from being an Ed Begley, Jr./Daryl Hannah option and will quickly become a government dictate because climate change is a “fact,” or as Ron Burgundy would say, “It’s science.”
Never mind the little detail that a staggering 31,000 scientists refused to sign the UN’s “consensus” on global warming hysteria, compared to the paltry 2,000 bought off wizards who John Hancocked it.
Or the other little ditty that Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com points out in his new book Green Hell that “there is no scientific evidence indicating that carbon dioxide, much less man-made carbon dioxide emissions, control or even measurably impact global climate. This is true whether you look at data going back 650,000 years, data from the twentieth century, or even data from the past ten years. Alarmist predictions of climatic doom are based exclusively on hypothetical mathematical models that have never been validated against the real world.”
But that shouldn’t bother us because we’re little slaves. And garsh, Al Gore said we’re destroying the globe! We know that tub of lard would never lie to us, so we must march, march, march, march, march . . .
Not only is this insane, unproven and ridiculously expensive green “lifestyle” going to further wreck our crippled economy, but it’s also going to screw with our freedoms like never before. You remember your freedoms, don’t you? If the green police have their way that’s what your freedoms will be: namely, a memory in the corners of your mind of the way we were. (That’s the only time I will ever allude to Streisand.)
Check this out from Milloy and Green Hell, “It’s time you recognize that a great green tsunami is heading your way, threatening to wash away your standard of living and many of your liberties . . . your sense of the green movement may be that it simply advocates small lifestyle changes to benefit the environment. But the green agenda, in fact, is much more ambitious; it promotes countless new restrictions and regulations designed to reorder society from top to bottom . . . living on a smaller, more inconvenient, more uncomfortable, more expensive, less enjoyable, and less hopeful scale . . . It’s about you living under the green thumb.”
Yep, the green police want to control what you eat, what you grow, what you drive, how you play, how you party, what you smoke, how many times your cow can fart, where you travel, what kind of crapper you have, whether you use tap or bottled water, and the square footage of your home. Isn’t that nice?
Welcome to green hell, you bastards. Get ready to have the rat cage strapped to your face. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I absolutely hate being told what to do and where to do it—especially for bogus, hello, reasons.
For instance, if I buy a small car it will be because I want to buy a small car. I bought my wife a beautiful Mini CooperS, not because some green jackass shamed us into it but because it is a screaming little high-quality ride, a veritable street legal go cart that she can park in a mailbox, which is important in a place like Miami (not to mention she looks smoking hot in it, as well).
However, now that we, the slaves of Obamaland, are being humiliated by “them” to get a Thumbelina car that goes at a top speed of 20mph and runs on Balinese spider monkey urine, I’ve decided to sell the Mini and get the Ford F-1150 Global Warmer with the Middle Finger Package that visibly melts the polar ice caps and turns the sky black when you crank it up. Matter of fact, I think I’ll get two: one for her to drive and one just to start and let run in my driveway.
Lastly, do yourself a favor—those of you who can still think freely—and get Steve Milloy’s new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them. As the founder and editor of JunkScience.com, Steve Milloy has been monitoring the greens for over 13 years. Now, as many Americans wake up under this green thumb for the first time, Milloy can tell us what the greens are targeting first—and what we as American citizens can do to stop them.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Doug Giles
Saturday, March 21, 2009
If you thought the global warming climate clowns were bad before Obama ascended to the throne, you ain’t seen nothing yet with our new chartreuse Commander in Chief. Of course Barack, personally or professionally, won’t go green because it’s too “inconvenient” and way too expensive for his gig, but for us serfs schlepping in Obamaland we will have to worship the turf because, you see, we’re murdering the earth. Quit laughing. This is serious. I said quit laughing. The earth is dying, and it ain’t funny.
In PoMo America where bullcrap is alive and well, we’re going to be forced to exchange the worship of God for grass. In Bermuda We Trust. And if we don’t bow and kiss Pelosi and her tribe’s jade ring we could be used as human tiki torches to light her garden. Be afraid, plebeians. Be afraid.
After Obama was ACORNed into the White House, several black hip hop “artists” said that with the election of Barack the White House would soon morph into the Black House. I hate to break it to you, Ludacris, but you’re a day late and a few special interest groups short, as the off-their-frickin’-rocker global warming Gestapo are in line way ahead of you to paint 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue green, dawg. Fo’ shizzle, my nizzle.
Brace yourself, boys and girls, as we’re about to have green shoved up our backsides like never before. Yep, going emerald will soon move from being an Ed Begley, Jr./Daryl Hannah option and will quickly become a government dictate because climate change is a “fact,” or as Ron Burgundy would say, “It’s science.”
Never mind the little detail that a staggering 31,000 scientists refused to sign the UN’s “consensus” on global warming hysteria, compared to the paltry 2,000 bought off wizards who John Hancocked it.
Or the other little ditty that Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com points out in his new book Green Hell that “there is no scientific evidence indicating that carbon dioxide, much less man-made carbon dioxide emissions, control or even measurably impact global climate. This is true whether you look at data going back 650,000 years, data from the twentieth century, or even data from the past ten years. Alarmist predictions of climatic doom are based exclusively on hypothetical mathematical models that have never been validated against the real world.”
But that shouldn’t bother us because we’re little slaves. And garsh, Al Gore said we’re destroying the globe! We know that tub of lard would never lie to us, so we must march, march, march, march, march . . .
Not only is this insane, unproven and ridiculously expensive green “lifestyle” going to further wreck our crippled economy, but it’s also going to screw with our freedoms like never before. You remember your freedoms, don’t you? If the green police have their way that’s what your freedoms will be: namely, a memory in the corners of your mind of the way we were. (That’s the only time I will ever allude to Streisand.)
Check this out from Milloy and Green Hell, “It’s time you recognize that a great green tsunami is heading your way, threatening to wash away your standard of living and many of your liberties . . . your sense of the green movement may be that it simply advocates small lifestyle changes to benefit the environment. But the green agenda, in fact, is much more ambitious; it promotes countless new restrictions and regulations designed to reorder society from top to bottom . . . living on a smaller, more inconvenient, more uncomfortable, more expensive, less enjoyable, and less hopeful scale . . . It’s about you living under the green thumb.”
Yep, the green police want to control what you eat, what you grow, what you drive, how you play, how you party, what you smoke, how many times your cow can fart, where you travel, what kind of crapper you have, whether you use tap or bottled water, and the square footage of your home. Isn’t that nice?
Welcome to green hell, you bastards. Get ready to have the rat cage strapped to your face. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I absolutely hate being told what to do and where to do it—especially for bogus, hello, reasons.
For instance, if I buy a small car it will be because I want to buy a small car. I bought my wife a beautiful Mini CooperS, not because some green jackass shamed us into it but because it is a screaming little high-quality ride, a veritable street legal go cart that she can park in a mailbox, which is important in a place like Miami (not to mention she looks smoking hot in it, as well).
However, now that we, the slaves of Obamaland, are being humiliated by “them” to get a Thumbelina car that goes at a top speed of 20mph and runs on Balinese spider monkey urine, I’ve decided to sell the Mini and get the Ford F-1150 Global Warmer with the Middle Finger Package that visibly melts the polar ice caps and turns the sky black when you crank it up. Matter of fact, I think I’ll get two: one for her to drive and one just to start and let run in my driveway.
Lastly, do yourself a favor—those of you who can still think freely—and get Steve Milloy’s new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them. As the founder and editor of JunkScience.com, Steve Milloy has been monitoring the greens for over 13 years. Now, as many Americans wake up under this green thumb for the first time, Milloy can tell us what the greens are targeting first—and what we as American citizens can do to stop them.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Some Forgotten Presidents Shouldn't Be.
Some Forgotten Presidents Shouldn't Be
David R. Stokes
Sunday, March 22, 2009
On August 2, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge had breakfast in the White House residence with his wife, Grace, and remarked to her “I have been president four years today.” It was one of those quick, concise, directly-to-the-point sentences she had been used to hearing since they met in 1905. It was also something the American people were familiar with, having nicknamed the 30th president “Silent Cal.”
He had a 9:00 meeting with reporters in his office that morning. Before fielding a few questions, he told those gathered: “If the conference will return at 12:00, I may have a further statement to make.” Curious, but compliant, in those long-since-gone days of semi-civility between presidents and the press, the journalists found their way back at noon.
An hour or so before that conference encore, Coolidge took a pencil and wrote a message on a piece of paper. He handed it to his secretary with the instruction to take it to his stenographer and have him make several copies – enough for the newsmen who would be at the 12:00 meeting. Ever the frugal man, he suggested that the brief statement could be copied several times on the same sheet, thus only using a few sheets of paper. He told the secretary not to give the note to the stenographer, though, until about 11:50 a.m.
He really wanted to manage this story.
He asked for the pages to be brought to him uncut and before the reporters were admitted to the office, he took a pair of scissors and cut the paper into smaller slips. When he was just about ready, he told his secretary:
“I am going to hand these out myself; I am going to give them to the newspapermen, without comment, from this side of the desk. I want you to stand at the door and not permit anyone to leave until each of them has a slip, so that they may have an even chance.”
An “even chance” at a big scoop, that is.
The handwritten note from the president said: “I do not choose to run for president in nineteen twenty-eight.” Though the now classic Broadway play (made into several film versions), The Front Page, was yet a year away from being published and produced, it comes to mind with the image of dozens of reporters rushing to find telephones.
Calvin Coolidge could have been re-elected if he had wanted the job for another term. His anointed successor, Herbert Hoover, won big in 1928, though it is clear that Coolidge was less-than-enthusiastic about the “Great Engineer.” It is one of those curious “what ifs” of history – would Coolidge have dealt with the coming of the Great Depression better than his successor?
Historians tend to bunch the three Republican presidents of the 1920s – Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover – together in a way suggesting they were identical triplets separated at birth. But there were many differences – some subtle, some not so much.
Herbert Hoover, all of his speechifying about “individualism” notwithstanding, was not the fiscal conservative many today make him out to be. As Amity Shlaes has pointed out in her often-quoted-these-days book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Mr. Hoover had a strong interventionist streak in his personality. He “could not control his own sense of agency,” and “liked to jump in, and find some moral justification for doing so later.” So, in many ways, he helped to turn a recession into the Great Depression “by intervening in business, by signing into law a destructive tariff, and by assailing the stock market.”
Ironically, when closely examined, Herbert Hoover’s approach to economics had more in common with his successor than it did with the two men preceding him in the White House.
Warren G. Harding generally ranks in the bottom five when studies are done about the effectiveness of our chief executives. In fact, Hoover fares better than the man from Marion, Ohio. This is largely due to the scandals that came to light after his untimely death in San Francisco in 1923 – the affair known as Teapot Dome. Also, some of Mr. Harding’s personal behavior was less-than-presidential. That said, he might have been a saint on that front compared to president’s 35 and 42.
What is usually missed about Harding, though, is how effective he was on the issue of the economy. When he assumed the presidency in March of 1921, he inherited a mess. Woodrow Wilson had expanded the role and size of government dramatically, incurred a $25 billion dollar debt, and cracked down on political opponents - even imprisoning some (socialist activist Eugene V. Debs, etc.).
In fact, the economic problems in the 1920-1921 depression were actually worse in many ways than the Great Depression a decade later. But that downturn didn’t last as long – thankfully. Warren Harding cut federal spending and lowered taxes. And in less than two years the number of unemployed in the country fell from 4.9 million to 2.8 million, en route to a rate of 1.8 per cent by 1926 under his successor, Mr. Coolidge.
Oh – and Harding set the political prisoners free, even inviting Debs to the White House. He was a classier act than many now remember.
By the time Calvin Coolidge became president upon the death of Harding in August of 1923, the country was on its way to enjoying some great years of prosperity. He was a fiscal conservative who tried his best to stay out of the way. He knew that the government functioned best as a referee – not as a participant in the economic game – or as a team owner.
After he was elected in his own right, he told the nation in his March 4, 1925 inaugural address:
“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. That is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can re-establish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very distinct curtailment of our liberty.”
His decision not to run in 1928 – at the height of his popularity – puzzled many. But Coolidge understood the nature of leadership, and its seductions. He explained it this way:
“It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation, which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless or arrogant.”
Of course, it can never been proven, but I suspect that had Calvin Coolidge decided to run again in 1928, he might have responded to the initial shockwaves of 1929-1930 differently than Hoover. And maybe, just maybe, the Great Depression would not have lasted so long. And maybe, just maybe, people who should know better these days would stop trying the same old failed “interventionist” tactics that never really worked backed then.
At any rate, Mr. Coolidge died suddenly on January 5, 1933, after Hoover had been badly beaten by Franklin Roosevelt. He did not live to see what a prolonged depression looked like, but one suspects that he would have ventured an opinion or two.
His words would have been brief and directly on point.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
David R. Stokes
Sunday, March 22, 2009
On August 2, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge had breakfast in the White House residence with his wife, Grace, and remarked to her “I have been president four years today.” It was one of those quick, concise, directly-to-the-point sentences she had been used to hearing since they met in 1905. It was also something the American people were familiar with, having nicknamed the 30th president “Silent Cal.”
He had a 9:00 meeting with reporters in his office that morning. Before fielding a few questions, he told those gathered: “If the conference will return at 12:00, I may have a further statement to make.” Curious, but compliant, in those long-since-gone days of semi-civility between presidents and the press, the journalists found their way back at noon.
An hour or so before that conference encore, Coolidge took a pencil and wrote a message on a piece of paper. He handed it to his secretary with the instruction to take it to his stenographer and have him make several copies – enough for the newsmen who would be at the 12:00 meeting. Ever the frugal man, he suggested that the brief statement could be copied several times on the same sheet, thus only using a few sheets of paper. He told the secretary not to give the note to the stenographer, though, until about 11:50 a.m.
He really wanted to manage this story.
He asked for the pages to be brought to him uncut and before the reporters were admitted to the office, he took a pair of scissors and cut the paper into smaller slips. When he was just about ready, he told his secretary:
“I am going to hand these out myself; I am going to give them to the newspapermen, without comment, from this side of the desk. I want you to stand at the door and not permit anyone to leave until each of them has a slip, so that they may have an even chance.”
An “even chance” at a big scoop, that is.
The handwritten note from the president said: “I do not choose to run for president in nineteen twenty-eight.” Though the now classic Broadway play (made into several film versions), The Front Page, was yet a year away from being published and produced, it comes to mind with the image of dozens of reporters rushing to find telephones.
Calvin Coolidge could have been re-elected if he had wanted the job for another term. His anointed successor, Herbert Hoover, won big in 1928, though it is clear that Coolidge was less-than-enthusiastic about the “Great Engineer.” It is one of those curious “what ifs” of history – would Coolidge have dealt with the coming of the Great Depression better than his successor?
Historians tend to bunch the three Republican presidents of the 1920s – Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover – together in a way suggesting they were identical triplets separated at birth. But there were many differences – some subtle, some not so much.
Herbert Hoover, all of his speechifying about “individualism” notwithstanding, was not the fiscal conservative many today make him out to be. As Amity Shlaes has pointed out in her often-quoted-these-days book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Mr. Hoover had a strong interventionist streak in his personality. He “could not control his own sense of agency,” and “liked to jump in, and find some moral justification for doing so later.” So, in many ways, he helped to turn a recession into the Great Depression “by intervening in business, by signing into law a destructive tariff, and by assailing the stock market.”
Ironically, when closely examined, Herbert Hoover’s approach to economics had more in common with his successor than it did with the two men preceding him in the White House.
Warren G. Harding generally ranks in the bottom five when studies are done about the effectiveness of our chief executives. In fact, Hoover fares better than the man from Marion, Ohio. This is largely due to the scandals that came to light after his untimely death in San Francisco in 1923 – the affair known as Teapot Dome. Also, some of Mr. Harding’s personal behavior was less-than-presidential. That said, he might have been a saint on that front compared to president’s 35 and 42.
What is usually missed about Harding, though, is how effective he was on the issue of the economy. When he assumed the presidency in March of 1921, he inherited a mess. Woodrow Wilson had expanded the role and size of government dramatically, incurred a $25 billion dollar debt, and cracked down on political opponents - even imprisoning some (socialist activist Eugene V. Debs, etc.).
In fact, the economic problems in the 1920-1921 depression were actually worse in many ways than the Great Depression a decade later. But that downturn didn’t last as long – thankfully. Warren Harding cut federal spending and lowered taxes. And in less than two years the number of unemployed in the country fell from 4.9 million to 2.8 million, en route to a rate of 1.8 per cent by 1926 under his successor, Mr. Coolidge.
Oh – and Harding set the political prisoners free, even inviting Debs to the White House. He was a classier act than many now remember.
By the time Calvin Coolidge became president upon the death of Harding in August of 1923, the country was on its way to enjoying some great years of prosperity. He was a fiscal conservative who tried his best to stay out of the way. He knew that the government functioned best as a referee – not as a participant in the economic game – or as a team owner.
After he was elected in his own right, he told the nation in his March 4, 1925 inaugural address:
“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. That is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can re-establish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very distinct curtailment of our liberty.”
His decision not to run in 1928 – at the height of his popularity – puzzled many. But Coolidge understood the nature of leadership, and its seductions. He explained it this way:
“It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation, which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless or arrogant.”
Of course, it can never been proven, but I suspect that had Calvin Coolidge decided to run again in 1928, he might have responded to the initial shockwaves of 1929-1930 differently than Hoover. And maybe, just maybe, the Great Depression would not have lasted so long. And maybe, just maybe, people who should know better these days would stop trying the same old failed “interventionist” tactics that never really worked backed then.
At any rate, Mr. Coolidge died suddenly on January 5, 1933, after Hoover had been badly beaten by Franklin Roosevelt. He did not live to see what a prolonged depression looked like, but one suspects that he would have ventured an opinion or two.
His words would have been brief and directly on point.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, March 20, 2009
How Can I Become an Illegal Alien?
FORMS ARE GOING FAST- SIGN UP TODAY!
Becoming Illegal (Actual letter from an Iowa resident and sent to his senator)
The Honorable Tom Harkin
731 Hart Senate Office Building
Phone (202) 224 3254
Washington DC , 20510
Dear Senator Harkin,
As a native Iowan and excellent customer of the Internal Revenue Service, I am writing to ask for your assistance. I have contacted the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to determine the process for becoming an illegal alien and they referred me to you.
My primary reason for wishing to change my status from U.S. Citizen to illegal alien stems from the bill which was recently passed by the Senate and for which you voted. If my understanding of this bill's provisions is accurate, as an illegal alien who has been in the United States for five years, all I need to do to become a citizen is to pay a $2,000 fine and income taxes for three of the last five years. I know a good deal when I see one and I am anxious to get the process started before everyone figures it out.
Simply put, those of us who have been here legally have had to pay taxes every year so I'm excited about the prospect of avoiding two years of taxes in return for paying a $2,000 fine. Is there any way that I can apply to be illegal retroactively? This would yield an excellent result for me and my family because we paid heavy taxes in 2004 and 2005.
Additionally, as an illegal alien I could begin using the local emergency room as my primary health care provider. Once I have stopped paying premiums for medical insurance, my accountant figures I could save almost $10,000 a year.
Another benefit in gaining illegal status would be that my daughter would receive preferential treatment relative to her law school applications, as well as 'in-state' tuition rates for many colleges throughout the United States for my son.
Lastly, I understand that illegal stat us would relieve me of the burden of renewing my driver's license and making those burdensome car insurance premiums. This is very important to me given that I still have college age children driving my car.
If you would provide me with an outline of the process to become illegal (retroactively if possible) and copies of the necessary forms, I would be most appreciative. Thank you for your assistance.
Your Loyal Constituent,
Donald Ruppert
Becoming Illegal (Actual letter from an Iowa resident and sent to his senator)
The Honorable Tom Harkin
731 Hart Senate Office Building
Phone (202) 224 3254
Washington DC , 20510
Dear Senator Harkin,
As a native Iowan and excellent customer of the Internal Revenue Service, I am writing to ask for your assistance. I have contacted the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to determine the process for becoming an illegal alien and they referred me to you.
My primary reason for wishing to change my status from U.S. Citizen to illegal alien stems from the bill which was recently passed by the Senate and for which you voted. If my understanding of this bill's provisions is accurate, as an illegal alien who has been in the United States for five years, all I need to do to become a citizen is to pay a $2,000 fine and income taxes for three of the last five years. I know a good deal when I see one and I am anxious to get the process started before everyone figures it out.
Simply put, those of us who have been here legally have had to pay taxes every year so I'm excited about the prospect of avoiding two years of taxes in return for paying a $2,000 fine. Is there any way that I can apply to be illegal retroactively? This would yield an excellent result for me and my family because we paid heavy taxes in 2004 and 2005.
Additionally, as an illegal alien I could begin using the local emergency room as my primary health care provider. Once I have stopped paying premiums for medical insurance, my accountant figures I could save almost $10,000 a year.
Another benefit in gaining illegal status would be that my daughter would receive preferential treatment relative to her law school applications, as well as 'in-state' tuition rates for many colleges throughout the United States for my son.
Lastly, I understand that illegal stat us would relieve me of the burden of renewing my driver's license and making those burdensome car insurance premiums. This is very important to me given that I still have college age children driving my car.
If you would provide me with an outline of the process to become illegal (retroactively if possible) and copies of the necessary forms, I would be most appreciative. Thank you for your assistance.
Your Loyal Constituent,
Donald Ruppert
Thursday, March 19, 2009
President McCain's First 50 Days.
A Front-Page Story: President McCain's First 50 Days
Larry Elder
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Suppose Sen. John McCain, rather than Sen. Barack Obama, won the presidency but made the same decisions and pursued the same goals to turn around the economy.
The following is a hypothetical front-page story:
After more than 50 days in office, the new President, even to some of his supporters, seems overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems he faces. Though he calls the economy job one, he confounds critics and supporters alike with the most audacious, ideologically driven agenda since the Great Depression, if not in the history of the republic.
He plans to change the role of government in virtually every aspect of society -- from education to health care to job creation to research and development to fighting "climate change" -- all of which call for drastically higher taxes and spending.
Since the President took office, the Dow Jones industrial average has plummeted, and unemployment keeps rising. Yet one of his top economic advisers recently said, "The fundamentals (of the economy) are sound" -- an assessment that drew sharp criticism during the campaign, when the economic picture looked better.
The President expects his plans to "create or save" millions of jobs. But by saying "create or save," he virtually protects himself against failure. During a recent hearing, a senator asked the secretary of Treasury, "What's a saved job?" The secretary gave a vague, meandering response about a "rise in unemployment avoided."
The President promised to end earmarks but signed a pork-laden stimulus bill that he proclaimed "free of earmarks." Then days later, the President signed a $410 billion continuing operations budget that contains almost 9,000 earmark projects.
The President's stimulus package, the constantly changing bailout package and this year's budget threaten to triple the annual deficit. The President's new budget (ironically entitled "A New Era of Responsibility") shows a total federal debt swelling more than 50 percent from 2008 to 2011 -- almost equaling 2011's gross domestic product -- and continues rising through 2019, the last year in the budget. Yet the President insists that he crafted the recovery plan "not because I believe in bigger government. I don't."
During then-President George W. Bush's final weeks in office, Congress authorized spending $700 billion to prop up banks, purportedly to buy these troubled or toxic assets. (As chairman of the New York Fed, the current Treasury secretary actually helped design that package.) But the banks receiving the most money actually reduced lending, the opposite of the intended purpose. More troubling, especially for an administration that promised transparency, the current White House cannot or will not definitively say how the money was spent and who received it.
Not all bankers even wanted the Troubled Asset Relief Program, with some critics arguing that without government intervention, the financial system could have self-corrected. The CEO of Wells Fargo complained that the government forced his bank into the program and that its mandates restrict his bank's ability to raise private funding. "Is this America," said Chairman Richard Kovacevich, "when you do what your government asks you to do and then retroactively you also have additional conditions? If we were not forced to take the TARP money, we would have been able to raise private capital at that time." As for the President's plan to "stress test" banks in order to isolate those worthy of bailout money, Kovacevich called it "asinine."
The President promised to rein in unreasonable executive compensation, but insurance giant AIG -- which received more than $170 billion in bailout money -- plans to pay out $165 million in "guaranteed" bonuses. An outraged public prompted the President to ask his Treasury secretary to again attempt to stop or reduce bonuses that AIG's CEO acknowledged as "distasteful" but defended as legal obligations.
The President's Treasury secretary, who received bipartisan confirmation despite nonpayment of some taxes, seems confused, not unlike a deer caught in the headlights. To make matters worse, the new secretary works as a one-man band. Of the 18 important undersecretary positions, none has been filled, with only three nominations currently under consideration. Two highly regarded undersecretary nominees abruptly withdrew their names, including one who many felt possessed significant expertise necessary to help the Treasury secretary explain and implement the administration's policies.
The failure to staff may be an unintended consequence of the President's executive order restricting the conditions under which former lobbyists can serve in government. The President has granted -- so far -- two dozen waivers to this policy. Yet the head of Britain's civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell, tried, by phone, to contact key Treasury personnel in preparation for the upcoming G-20 summit. The phones just rang. "There is nobody there," said O'Donnell.
The President's supporters speak of his enormous "popularity." But his sliding favorability numbers put him on par with former President George W. Bush at this point in their initial terms.
Americans, more and more, find themselves saying, "There is nobody there."
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Larry Elder
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Suppose Sen. John McCain, rather than Sen. Barack Obama, won the presidency but made the same decisions and pursued the same goals to turn around the economy.
The following is a hypothetical front-page story:
After more than 50 days in office, the new President, even to some of his supporters, seems overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems he faces. Though he calls the economy job one, he confounds critics and supporters alike with the most audacious, ideologically driven agenda since the Great Depression, if not in the history of the republic.
He plans to change the role of government in virtually every aspect of society -- from education to health care to job creation to research and development to fighting "climate change" -- all of which call for drastically higher taxes and spending.
Since the President took office, the Dow Jones industrial average has plummeted, and unemployment keeps rising. Yet one of his top economic advisers recently said, "The fundamentals (of the economy) are sound" -- an assessment that drew sharp criticism during the campaign, when the economic picture looked better.
The President expects his plans to "create or save" millions of jobs. But by saying "create or save," he virtually protects himself against failure. During a recent hearing, a senator asked the secretary of Treasury, "What's a saved job?" The secretary gave a vague, meandering response about a "rise in unemployment avoided."
The President promised to end earmarks but signed a pork-laden stimulus bill that he proclaimed "free of earmarks." Then days later, the President signed a $410 billion continuing operations budget that contains almost 9,000 earmark projects.
The President's stimulus package, the constantly changing bailout package and this year's budget threaten to triple the annual deficit. The President's new budget (ironically entitled "A New Era of Responsibility") shows a total federal debt swelling more than 50 percent from 2008 to 2011 -- almost equaling 2011's gross domestic product -- and continues rising through 2019, the last year in the budget. Yet the President insists that he crafted the recovery plan "not because I believe in bigger government. I don't."
During then-President George W. Bush's final weeks in office, Congress authorized spending $700 billion to prop up banks, purportedly to buy these troubled or toxic assets. (As chairman of the New York Fed, the current Treasury secretary actually helped design that package.) But the banks receiving the most money actually reduced lending, the opposite of the intended purpose. More troubling, especially for an administration that promised transparency, the current White House cannot or will not definitively say how the money was spent and who received it.
Not all bankers even wanted the Troubled Asset Relief Program, with some critics arguing that without government intervention, the financial system could have self-corrected. The CEO of Wells Fargo complained that the government forced his bank into the program and that its mandates restrict his bank's ability to raise private funding. "Is this America," said Chairman Richard Kovacevich, "when you do what your government asks you to do and then retroactively you also have additional conditions? If we were not forced to take the TARP money, we would have been able to raise private capital at that time." As for the President's plan to "stress test" banks in order to isolate those worthy of bailout money, Kovacevich called it "asinine."
The President promised to rein in unreasonable executive compensation, but insurance giant AIG -- which received more than $170 billion in bailout money -- plans to pay out $165 million in "guaranteed" bonuses. An outraged public prompted the President to ask his Treasury secretary to again attempt to stop or reduce bonuses that AIG's CEO acknowledged as "distasteful" but defended as legal obligations.
The President's Treasury secretary, who received bipartisan confirmation despite nonpayment of some taxes, seems confused, not unlike a deer caught in the headlights. To make matters worse, the new secretary works as a one-man band. Of the 18 important undersecretary positions, none has been filled, with only three nominations currently under consideration. Two highly regarded undersecretary nominees abruptly withdrew their names, including one who many felt possessed significant expertise necessary to help the Treasury secretary explain and implement the administration's policies.
The failure to staff may be an unintended consequence of the President's executive order restricting the conditions under which former lobbyists can serve in government. The President has granted -- so far -- two dozen waivers to this policy. Yet the head of Britain's civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell, tried, by phone, to contact key Treasury personnel in preparation for the upcoming G-20 summit. The phones just rang. "There is nobody there," said O'Donnell.
The President's supporters speak of his enormous "popularity." But his sliding favorability numbers put him on par with former President George W. Bush at this point in their initial terms.
Americans, more and more, find themselves saying, "There is nobody there."
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
PROSPERITY LOST!
Prosperity Lost
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Ask the average person which is the correct answer to the following question: Which president gave the biggest tax cuts for the rich -- Reagan or Bush? I would bet the rent money that you would not get the correct response, which is: Presidents have no taxing authority. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution says: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises." I know that many politicians and news media people read my column. How do we characterize them if they continue to speak of presidents cutting or raising taxes?
Another tax question: If there's an imposition of a property tax on your land, who pays the tax? I guarantee you that land does not pay taxes; only people pay taxes. That means a tax on your land is a tax on you. You say, "Williams, that's pretty elementary, isn't it?" But what do you say to a politician or news media people who propose increasing corporate taxes as means to get rich corporations to pay their rightful share of government? They should be told that they speak nonsense because corporations, like land, do not pay taxes; only people pay taxes.
If a tax is levied on a corporation, and if it is to survive, it must raise the price of its product, or lower dividends or lay off workers. In each case, it is people, not some legal fiction called a corporation, who bear the burden of any tax levied on the corporation. An important subject area in economics called tax incidence says that the entity upon whom a tax is levied does not necessarily bear the burden of the tax. Some of the tax burden can be shifted to another party. That's precisely what corporations do and as such they are merely government tax collectors.
Here's another tax question: Which worker receives the higher pay: a worker on a road construction project moving dirt with a shovel or a worker moving dirt atop a giant earthmover? If you said the guy on the earthmover, go to the head of the class. But why? It's not because he's unionized or that employers just love earthmover operators. It's because having more capital (tools) makes him more productive and therefore earn higher wages.
It's not rocket science to conclude that whatever lowers the cost of capital formation enables workers to have more capital to work with and enjoy higher wages. Policies that raise the cost of capital formation such as capital gains taxes, low depreciation allowances and high corporate income taxes, and thereby reducing capital formation, serves neither the interests of workers, investors nor consumers.
Taxes also reduce transactions. I need my computer repaired. You and I agree that the job is worth $200. Suppose there's the imposition of a 30 percent income tax on you. That means you would net only $140 and might refuse the job. You might suggest that if I were willing to pay you $285 you would do the job because at that price your after-tax earnings will be $200 -- what doing the job is worth to you. There's a problem. The repair job was worth $200 to me, not $285. So it's my turn to say the heck with it, or would we and society be better off if you and I agreed to the repair job but did not tell anybody? I'd say yes, but we'd be criminals.
You might wonder how congressmen can get away with taxes and other measures that reduce our prosperity potential. Part of the answer is the anti-business climate promoted in academia and the news media. The more important reason is that prosperity foregone is invisible. In other words, we can never tell how much richer we would have been without today's level of congressional interference in our lives and therefore don't fight it as much as we should.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Ask the average person which is the correct answer to the following question: Which president gave the biggest tax cuts for the rich -- Reagan or Bush? I would bet the rent money that you would not get the correct response, which is: Presidents have no taxing authority. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution says: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises." I know that many politicians and news media people read my column. How do we characterize them if they continue to speak of presidents cutting or raising taxes?
Another tax question: If there's an imposition of a property tax on your land, who pays the tax? I guarantee you that land does not pay taxes; only people pay taxes. That means a tax on your land is a tax on you. You say, "Williams, that's pretty elementary, isn't it?" But what do you say to a politician or news media people who propose increasing corporate taxes as means to get rich corporations to pay their rightful share of government? They should be told that they speak nonsense because corporations, like land, do not pay taxes; only people pay taxes.
If a tax is levied on a corporation, and if it is to survive, it must raise the price of its product, or lower dividends or lay off workers. In each case, it is people, not some legal fiction called a corporation, who bear the burden of any tax levied on the corporation. An important subject area in economics called tax incidence says that the entity upon whom a tax is levied does not necessarily bear the burden of the tax. Some of the tax burden can be shifted to another party. That's precisely what corporations do and as such they are merely government tax collectors.
Here's another tax question: Which worker receives the higher pay: a worker on a road construction project moving dirt with a shovel or a worker moving dirt atop a giant earthmover? If you said the guy on the earthmover, go to the head of the class. But why? It's not because he's unionized or that employers just love earthmover operators. It's because having more capital (tools) makes him more productive and therefore earn higher wages.
It's not rocket science to conclude that whatever lowers the cost of capital formation enables workers to have more capital to work with and enjoy higher wages. Policies that raise the cost of capital formation such as capital gains taxes, low depreciation allowances and high corporate income taxes, and thereby reducing capital formation, serves neither the interests of workers, investors nor consumers.
Taxes also reduce transactions. I need my computer repaired. You and I agree that the job is worth $200. Suppose there's the imposition of a 30 percent income tax on you. That means you would net only $140 and might refuse the job. You might suggest that if I were willing to pay you $285 you would do the job because at that price your after-tax earnings will be $200 -- what doing the job is worth to you. There's a problem. The repair job was worth $200 to me, not $285. So it's my turn to say the heck with it, or would we and society be better off if you and I agreed to the repair job but did not tell anybody? I'd say yes, but we'd be criminals.
You might wonder how congressmen can get away with taxes and other measures that reduce our prosperity potential. Part of the answer is the anti-business climate promoted in academia and the news media. The more important reason is that prosperity foregone is invisible. In other words, we can never tell how much richer we would have been without today's level of congressional interference in our lives and therefore don't fight it as much as we should.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Is Obama Designing the End of Capitalism?
Is Obama Designing the End of Capitalism?
Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Amid all of the mixed messages on the strength of the economy coming from the White House, one theme has emerged loudly, clearly, and unvaryingly: The American economic system is about to undergo a profound shift. “Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel famously stated. “Never waste a good crisis,” concurred Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Americans, said Obama, should “discover great opportunity in great crisis.” What kind of opportunity? “Capitalism,” Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner said last week, “will be different.”
All of Obama’s economic policies thus far are designed to drive America into full embrace of socialism. His chief means for this transformation: inflation. He is attempting to inflate the currency through two primary means: intense deficit spending, and pushing up production costs through union subsidization. In order to make these measures politically palatable, he cites FDR as an example of good deficit spending; he cites the credit crunch as an excuse for inflationary monetary policy; and he recommends unionization in order to boost wages.
It’s a beautiful strategy for purposefully trashing capitalism, all the while blaming capitalism for its own downfall. John Maynard Keynes, the liberal economist who championed government intervention during recessions, recognized Obama’s inflationary strategy for what it is: “Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency,” said Keynes. “Lenin was certainly right. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
Obama pursues inflation -- government devaluation of the currency -- with the zeal of the newly converted. His deficit spending will be financed either through higher taxes or through inflation. Obama says he will push higher taxes -- after all, he wants to appease the Chinese, who don’t want their U.S. securities paid off with inflated dollars. But covertly, Obama fully intends on inflating the currency to pay of the massive deficit he has shoved through Congress. Meanwhile, he uses the increased prices produced by inflation to justify continuing unionization -- he backs “card check” legislation -- forcing up the cost of doing business and throwing people out of work. He then blames unemployment on the failure of the free market and states that the government must step in to hire more Americans.
It’s the same tried and true policy that created the Great Depression. During the inflationary period following the institution of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the purchasing power of the dollar fell rapidly -- 56 percent by 1929. The easy availability of credit led to the same sort of economic bubble mirrored during the recent real estate boom.
The government’s response was the same, too. According to economist Murray Rothbard, within a week after the stock market crash of 1929, the Federal Reserve pumped cash into the system: it added $300 million to the private bank reserves; it doubled its holdings of government securities, adding $150 million to the reserves, and discounting $200 million for member banks. Writes Rothbard, “As a result, the weekly reporting member banks expanded their deposits during the fateful last week of October by $1.8 billion (a monetary expansion of nearly 10 percent in one week).” The Federal Reserve lowered its discount rate from 6 percent to 4.5 percent.
This, of course, did not stave off the Great Depression. Similarly, Germany, Britain and many other European countries moved off the gold standard in the early 1930s; this merely heightened the sense of urgency in the United States, where the gold standard was still in place, leading to runs on gold. FDR countered by dramatically inflating the currency in 1933, when he made it unlawful for private persons to hold gold; in 1934, he reset the value of the dollar at $35 per ounce of gold rather than the previous $20.67.
Without financial stability ensured by the free market gold standard, banks became even less willing to lend. FDR attempted to push up wage rates by backing labor against business; the result was prolonged unemployment, because prices were already too high.
And all of this justified more and more governmental intrusion.
Now Obama wants to pursue the same inflationary policies. He’s pushing the deficit beyond the breaking point. He’s using “card check” to inflate wages, producing unemployment. He’s destroying savings.
And he’s loving every minute of it. When it comes to inflation, very few people can identify its pernicious effects; it’s far easier to cite the dangers of laissez-faire capitalism. Which, of course, is Obama’s plan. Capitalism will be different when Obama finishes with it -- it will be another name for socialism, purposefully brought on by governmental measures.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Amid all of the mixed messages on the strength of the economy coming from the White House, one theme has emerged loudly, clearly, and unvaryingly: The American economic system is about to undergo a profound shift. “Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel famously stated. “Never waste a good crisis,” concurred Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Americans, said Obama, should “discover great opportunity in great crisis.” What kind of opportunity? “Capitalism,” Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner said last week, “will be different.”
All of Obama’s economic policies thus far are designed to drive America into full embrace of socialism. His chief means for this transformation: inflation. He is attempting to inflate the currency through two primary means: intense deficit spending, and pushing up production costs through union subsidization. In order to make these measures politically palatable, he cites FDR as an example of good deficit spending; he cites the credit crunch as an excuse for inflationary monetary policy; and he recommends unionization in order to boost wages.
It’s a beautiful strategy for purposefully trashing capitalism, all the while blaming capitalism for its own downfall. John Maynard Keynes, the liberal economist who championed government intervention during recessions, recognized Obama’s inflationary strategy for what it is: “Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency,” said Keynes. “Lenin was certainly right. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
Obama pursues inflation -- government devaluation of the currency -- with the zeal of the newly converted. His deficit spending will be financed either through higher taxes or through inflation. Obama says he will push higher taxes -- after all, he wants to appease the Chinese, who don’t want their U.S. securities paid off with inflated dollars. But covertly, Obama fully intends on inflating the currency to pay of the massive deficit he has shoved through Congress. Meanwhile, he uses the increased prices produced by inflation to justify continuing unionization -- he backs “card check” legislation -- forcing up the cost of doing business and throwing people out of work. He then blames unemployment on the failure of the free market and states that the government must step in to hire more Americans.
It’s the same tried and true policy that created the Great Depression. During the inflationary period following the institution of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the purchasing power of the dollar fell rapidly -- 56 percent by 1929. The easy availability of credit led to the same sort of economic bubble mirrored during the recent real estate boom.
The government’s response was the same, too. According to economist Murray Rothbard, within a week after the stock market crash of 1929, the Federal Reserve pumped cash into the system: it added $300 million to the private bank reserves; it doubled its holdings of government securities, adding $150 million to the reserves, and discounting $200 million for member banks. Writes Rothbard, “As a result, the weekly reporting member banks expanded their deposits during the fateful last week of October by $1.8 billion (a monetary expansion of nearly 10 percent in one week).” The Federal Reserve lowered its discount rate from 6 percent to 4.5 percent.
This, of course, did not stave off the Great Depression. Similarly, Germany, Britain and many other European countries moved off the gold standard in the early 1930s; this merely heightened the sense of urgency in the United States, where the gold standard was still in place, leading to runs on gold. FDR countered by dramatically inflating the currency in 1933, when he made it unlawful for private persons to hold gold; in 1934, he reset the value of the dollar at $35 per ounce of gold rather than the previous $20.67.
Without financial stability ensured by the free market gold standard, banks became even less willing to lend. FDR attempted to push up wage rates by backing labor against business; the result was prolonged unemployment, because prices were already too high.
And all of this justified more and more governmental intrusion.
Now Obama wants to pursue the same inflationary policies. He’s pushing the deficit beyond the breaking point. He’s using “card check” to inflate wages, producing unemployment. He’s destroying savings.
And he’s loving every minute of it. When it comes to inflation, very few people can identify its pernicious effects; it’s far easier to cite the dangers of laissez-faire capitalism. Which, of course, is Obama’s plan. Capitalism will be different when Obama finishes with it -- it will be another name for socialism, purposefully brought on by governmental measures.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
False Solutions and Real Problems
False Solutions and Real Problems
Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Someone once said that Senator Hubert Humphrey, liberal icon of an earlier generation, had more solutions than there were problems.
Senator Humphrey was not unique in that respect. In fact, our present economic crisis has developed out of politicians providing solutions to problems that did not exist-- and, as a result, producing a problem whose existence is all too real and all too painful.
What was the problem that didn't exist? It was a national problem of unaffordable housing. The political crusade for affordable housing got into high gear in the 1990s and led to all kinds of changes in mortgage lending practices, which in turn led to a housing boom and bust that has left us in the mess we are now trying to dig out of.
Usually housing affordability is measured in terms of how much of the average person's income it takes to cover either apartment rent or a monthly mortgage payment.
There were certainly places here and there where it took half a family's income just to put a roof over their heads. Many such places were in coastal California but there were a few others, here and there, on the east coast and elsewhere.
But, vast areas of the country in between-- "flyover country" to the east coast and west coast elites-- had housing prices that took no larger share of the average American's income than in the decade before the affordable housing crusade got under way.
Why then a national crusade by Washington politicians over local problems? Probably as good an answer as any is that "It seemed like a good idea at the time." How are we to be kept aware of how compassionate and how important our elected officials are unless they are busy solving some problem for us?
The problem of skyrocketing housing prices was all too real in those places where this problem existed. When you have to live on half your income because the other half goes for housing, that's a real downer.
Almost invariably, these severe local problems had local causes-- usually severe local restrictions on building homes. These restrictions had a variety of politically attractive names, ranging from "open space" laws and "smart growth" policies to "environmental protection" and "farmland preservation."
Like most wonderful-sounding political slogans, none of these lofty goals was discussed in terms of that one four-letter word that people do not use in polite political society-- "cost."
No one asked how many hundreds of thousands of dollars would be added to the cost of an average home by "open space" laws, for example. Yet empirical studies have shown that land-use restrictions added at least a hundred thousand dollars to the average home price in dozens of places around the country.
In some places, such as coastal California, these restrictions added several hundred thousand dollars to the price of the average home.
In other words, where the problem was real, local politicians were the cause. National politicians then tried to depict this as a national problem that they would solve.
How would they solve it? By pressuring banks and other lenders to lower their requirements for making mortgage loans, so that more people could buy houses. The Department of Housing and Urban Development gave the government-sponsored enterprise Fannie Mae quotas for how many mortgages it should buy that were made out for people for low to moderate incomes.
Like most political "solutions," the solution to the affordable housing "problem" took little or no account of the wider repercussions this would entail.
Various economists and others warned repeatedly that lowered lending standards meant more risky mortgages. Given the complex relationships among banks and other financial institutions, including many big Wall Street firms, if mortgages started defaulting, all the financial dominoes could start falling.
These warnings were brushed aside. Politicians were too busy solving a national problem that didn't exist. In the process, they created very real problems. Now they are now offering even more solutions that will undoubtedly lead to even bigger problems.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Someone once said that Senator Hubert Humphrey, liberal icon of an earlier generation, had more solutions than there were problems.
Senator Humphrey was not unique in that respect. In fact, our present economic crisis has developed out of politicians providing solutions to problems that did not exist-- and, as a result, producing a problem whose existence is all too real and all too painful.
What was the problem that didn't exist? It was a national problem of unaffordable housing. The political crusade for affordable housing got into high gear in the 1990s and led to all kinds of changes in mortgage lending practices, which in turn led to a housing boom and bust that has left us in the mess we are now trying to dig out of.
Usually housing affordability is measured in terms of how much of the average person's income it takes to cover either apartment rent or a monthly mortgage payment.
There were certainly places here and there where it took half a family's income just to put a roof over their heads. Many such places were in coastal California but there were a few others, here and there, on the east coast and elsewhere.
But, vast areas of the country in between-- "flyover country" to the east coast and west coast elites-- had housing prices that took no larger share of the average American's income than in the decade before the affordable housing crusade got under way.
Why then a national crusade by Washington politicians over local problems? Probably as good an answer as any is that "It seemed like a good idea at the time." How are we to be kept aware of how compassionate and how important our elected officials are unless they are busy solving some problem for us?
The problem of skyrocketing housing prices was all too real in those places where this problem existed. When you have to live on half your income because the other half goes for housing, that's a real downer.
Almost invariably, these severe local problems had local causes-- usually severe local restrictions on building homes. These restrictions had a variety of politically attractive names, ranging from "open space" laws and "smart growth" policies to "environmental protection" and "farmland preservation."
Like most wonderful-sounding political slogans, none of these lofty goals was discussed in terms of that one four-letter word that people do not use in polite political society-- "cost."
No one asked how many hundreds of thousands of dollars would be added to the cost of an average home by "open space" laws, for example. Yet empirical studies have shown that land-use restrictions added at least a hundred thousand dollars to the average home price in dozens of places around the country.
In some places, such as coastal California, these restrictions added several hundred thousand dollars to the price of the average home.
In other words, where the problem was real, local politicians were the cause. National politicians then tried to depict this as a national problem that they would solve.
How would they solve it? By pressuring banks and other lenders to lower their requirements for making mortgage loans, so that more people could buy houses. The Department of Housing and Urban Development gave the government-sponsored enterprise Fannie Mae quotas for how many mortgages it should buy that were made out for people for low to moderate incomes.
Like most political "solutions," the solution to the affordable housing "problem" took little or no account of the wider repercussions this would entail.
Various economists and others warned repeatedly that lowered lending standards meant more risky mortgages. Given the complex relationships among banks and other financial institutions, including many big Wall Street firms, if mortgages started defaulting, all the financial dominoes could start falling.
These warnings were brushed aside. Politicians were too busy solving a national problem that didn't exist. In the process, they created very real problems. Now they are now offering even more solutions that will undoubtedly lead to even bigger problems.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Horsing Around.
Horsing Around
Cal Thomas
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
When politicians get on their high horses about something, it is almost certain that a considerable amount of horse manure will get spread around.
Such is the case with the giant insurance firm American International Group, Inc. (AIG), which was declared "too big to fail" during the Bush administration.
The Obama administration has denounced bonuses received by top AIG executives. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been jawboning -- apparently with some success -- to get AIG to re-negotiate some of the $165 million in bonuses. Even House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA), who failed to provide proper oversight for some of the entities that got into financial trouble (Frank famously reported in 2003 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "fundamentally sound" mortgage lending institutions), went on the "Today" show Monday and ranted about the supposed evils of AIG.
This is all populism, of course, since the amount of money Congress wastes every minute makes whatever earned or unearned money paid to AIG employees, pale by comparison. For politicians to complain about misspent tax dollars is like one of those tabloid honeys lamenting the decline in family values.
This play within a play is ultimately not about AIG, corporate aircraft, fancy resorts and partying executives, all of which have been denounced by President Obama and members of his administration, along with many fulminating members of the media. While some people rail against "greed," some of the less affluent operate according to another of the "seven deadly sins," which is envy.
I don't care how much money someone else makes. I simply want the opportunity to make the same, or more, should I choose to.
Just how much this attitude of envy has sunk in with so many was on display last Monday on Rush Limbaugh's radio program (stay with me non-Rush fans because this is an important point no matter who makes it). A man named Nathan called the show, upset about the AIG executives who received "bailouts with taxpayer money."
After making several points and getting nowhere, Rush asked Nathan how much he would like to make. Nathan said, "$250,000." "What's keeping you from earning that much money?" asked Rush.
Nathan replied that he didn't have enough education. Rush asked him his age. Nathan answered, "31." Rush said, "The only thing keeping you from making that much money, or more, is you."
Nathan hung up. He didn't want to hear this. He'd bought the fiction that there are limited amounts of money available and if an AIG employee is making more than he is, Nathan is being deprived of money that could be his.
Limbaugh said that making $250,000 is difficult, but not impossible with the right education, experience and most importantly, persistence.
Who teaches such values today? If you don't succeed, it's someone else's fault, not yours. Others who have succeeded owe it to you to make things "fair." Instead of attending to ways in which our own lives and circumstances might be improved, too many try to bring others down to their level. That never improves conditions for the ones at the bottom, but it makes them feel better, which is the objective of liberal politicians who want to keep people in sufficient misery so they'll continue to win their votes. It apparently doesn't occur to the miserable that they have a ticket out of their circumstances, if they will only climb aboard the right train.
Secretary Geithner wants AIG and executives at other companies that receive tax dollars to be paid according to performance. That is a standard most of us would like to see applied to Congress, which enjoys annual pay increases no matter how much incompetence, malfeasance and misfeasance it demonstrates.
If it is a good idea to tie teacher pay to performance (and it is), it is a better idea to link the pay of politicians to performance. Look for that about the time Congress votes for term limits.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Cal Thomas
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
When politicians get on their high horses about something, it is almost certain that a considerable amount of horse manure will get spread around.
Such is the case with the giant insurance firm American International Group, Inc. (AIG), which was declared "too big to fail" during the Bush administration.
The Obama administration has denounced bonuses received by top AIG executives. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been jawboning -- apparently with some success -- to get AIG to re-negotiate some of the $165 million in bonuses. Even House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA), who failed to provide proper oversight for some of the entities that got into financial trouble (Frank famously reported in 2003 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "fundamentally sound" mortgage lending institutions), went on the "Today" show Monday and ranted about the supposed evils of AIG.
This is all populism, of course, since the amount of money Congress wastes every minute makes whatever earned or unearned money paid to AIG employees, pale by comparison. For politicians to complain about misspent tax dollars is like one of those tabloid honeys lamenting the decline in family values.
This play within a play is ultimately not about AIG, corporate aircraft, fancy resorts and partying executives, all of which have been denounced by President Obama and members of his administration, along with many fulminating members of the media. While some people rail against "greed," some of the less affluent operate according to another of the "seven deadly sins," which is envy.
I don't care how much money someone else makes. I simply want the opportunity to make the same, or more, should I choose to.
Just how much this attitude of envy has sunk in with so many was on display last Monday on Rush Limbaugh's radio program (stay with me non-Rush fans because this is an important point no matter who makes it). A man named Nathan called the show, upset about the AIG executives who received "bailouts with taxpayer money."
After making several points and getting nowhere, Rush asked Nathan how much he would like to make. Nathan said, "$250,000." "What's keeping you from earning that much money?" asked Rush.
Nathan replied that he didn't have enough education. Rush asked him his age. Nathan answered, "31." Rush said, "The only thing keeping you from making that much money, or more, is you."
Nathan hung up. He didn't want to hear this. He'd bought the fiction that there are limited amounts of money available and if an AIG employee is making more than he is, Nathan is being deprived of money that could be his.
Limbaugh said that making $250,000 is difficult, but not impossible with the right education, experience and most importantly, persistence.
Who teaches such values today? If you don't succeed, it's someone else's fault, not yours. Others who have succeeded owe it to you to make things "fair." Instead of attending to ways in which our own lives and circumstances might be improved, too many try to bring others down to their level. That never improves conditions for the ones at the bottom, but it makes them feel better, which is the objective of liberal politicians who want to keep people in sufficient misery so they'll continue to win their votes. It apparently doesn't occur to the miserable that they have a ticket out of their circumstances, if they will only climb aboard the right train.
Secretary Geithner wants AIG and executives at other companies that receive tax dollars to be paid according to performance. That is a standard most of us would like to see applied to Congress, which enjoys annual pay increases no matter how much incompetence, malfeasance and misfeasance it demonstrates.
If it is a good idea to tie teacher pay to performance (and it is), it is a better idea to link the pay of politicians to performance. Look for that about the time Congress votes for term limits.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Congress and Excess.
Congress And Excess
Brent Bozell III
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Outrage burst forth from lawmakers in Washington when the story broke that insurance giant AIG still planned to dole out $165 million in bonuses to executives while it teeters near bankruptcy, kept afloat by taxpayers. But the outrage is mostly coming from hypocrites. Just days earlier, President Obama signed an omnibus spending bill with $12.8 billion in self-serving earmarks for legislators during the economic crisis. How can the president and Congress lecture AIG? Don't the earmarking hogs look like hypocrites?
Liberals dismiss complaints about their drunken spending habits as just a conservative distraction. Why, it's only a couple percentage points of the omnibus spending bill. So how much of the AIG bailout is for bonuses? The company has benefited from more than $170 billion in government bailout cash, or $1 out of $1,000. If the earmarks are a tiny distraction, the AIG bonuses are less than insignificant.
But no one's expecting the media to be consistent in their thinking. The same reporters who yawned past the excesses of the Democrats (and yes, the Republicans) stuffing their budget with pork -- now they're outraged, positively outraged at AIG.
ABC morning anchor Chris Cuomo played up the populist anger: "Outrageous. A slap in the face. That's how lawmakers are describing insurance company AIG's decision to hand out $165 million in bonuses after receiving $170 billion in your money." He even allowed Republican Sen. Richard Shelby to rail against AIG, without noting that Sen. Shelby was a leading Republican at the earmark trough, with $114 million in pet projects.
Last week, Cuomo left out the adjectives like "outrageous" as he noted Obama would sign a pile of earmark spending into law: "Despite pledging to crack down on them, President Obama today will sign a $410-billion spending bill loaded with congressional pet projects known as earmarks. The president says he's only signing the bill to finish up last year's business. Today, he will outline a plan to curb earmarks in the future."
The media found no outrage as a Democratic-majority Congress feathered its own nest during this downturn, including no move to freeze its own automatic pay increase of $4,700 a year for 2009. They didn't have to vote for a pay raise. They have rigged it now so the raise is automatic. Freshman Rep. Harry Mitchell, a Democrat, attempted to stop it, but it never came out of committee. Outrage, anyone?
The media largely skipped the story last week that the group Judicial Watch found that Speaker Nancy Pelosi's aides fussed about the need to have high-level military aircraft like the Gulfstream G-5 at Pelosi's beck and call: "It is my understanding there are NO G-5s available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable ...The Speaker will want to know where the planes are," Kay King wrote. In another note, when told a certain type of aircraft would not be available, King complained: "This is not good news, and we will have some very disappointed folks, as well as a very upset speaker."
Do you remember when Pelosi pledged to clean out a Republican culture of corruption and "drain the swamp" of self-interest? That was news then. But now that she is exposed as even more corrupt? ABC, CBS, NBC and NPR all skipped the Air Pelosi story. Fox News had it, and CNN covered it -- on the contrarian Lou Dobbs show.
Every once in a blue moon, a reporter will file a story that breaks from the pack. On Feb. 16, ABC reporter Jonathan Karl found footage of congressmen lecturing auto executives about superfluous jet travel, and then reported that members of Congress regularly travel the globe on the taxpayer's dime. Ten members and their spouses traveled via the Air Force at that time to Brussels, Vienna, Paris and the Bavarian Alps. "We asked how much this cost," Karl insisted. "But the amount taxpayers spend on military travel for Congress is a tightly guarded secret. The cheapest charter flight we could find was $200,000. Military air would cost more. How much more? Neither Congress nor the Pentagon would tell us."
So much for the vaunted transparency of the Obama era. But it was only one story.
Karl even confronted liberal Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York about his $14,000 in transportation costs for a trip to London. "I didn't go to England," Ackerman claimed. Karl said the record had his name on a three-day trip to Britain. Ackerman revised his remarks: "Oh, I represented the United States Congress." When asked how he spent 14 grand in taxpayer money, Ackerman blamed staff: "Whatever the airline costs, I don't book the flights."
How does this dismissive answer make Ackerman or his Congressional colleagues look any different than insensitive AIG executives?
Good for Jonathan Karl. Where is everyone else?
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Brent Bozell III
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Outrage burst forth from lawmakers in Washington when the story broke that insurance giant AIG still planned to dole out $165 million in bonuses to executives while it teeters near bankruptcy, kept afloat by taxpayers. But the outrage is mostly coming from hypocrites. Just days earlier, President Obama signed an omnibus spending bill with $12.8 billion in self-serving earmarks for legislators during the economic crisis. How can the president and Congress lecture AIG? Don't the earmarking hogs look like hypocrites?
Liberals dismiss complaints about their drunken spending habits as just a conservative distraction. Why, it's only a couple percentage points of the omnibus spending bill. So how much of the AIG bailout is for bonuses? The company has benefited from more than $170 billion in government bailout cash, or $1 out of $1,000. If the earmarks are a tiny distraction, the AIG bonuses are less than insignificant.
But no one's expecting the media to be consistent in their thinking. The same reporters who yawned past the excesses of the Democrats (and yes, the Republicans) stuffing their budget with pork -- now they're outraged, positively outraged at AIG.
ABC morning anchor Chris Cuomo played up the populist anger: "Outrageous. A slap in the face. That's how lawmakers are describing insurance company AIG's decision to hand out $165 million in bonuses after receiving $170 billion in your money." He even allowed Republican Sen. Richard Shelby to rail against AIG, without noting that Sen. Shelby was a leading Republican at the earmark trough, with $114 million in pet projects.
Last week, Cuomo left out the adjectives like "outrageous" as he noted Obama would sign a pile of earmark spending into law: "Despite pledging to crack down on them, President Obama today will sign a $410-billion spending bill loaded with congressional pet projects known as earmarks. The president says he's only signing the bill to finish up last year's business. Today, he will outline a plan to curb earmarks in the future."
The media found no outrage as a Democratic-majority Congress feathered its own nest during this downturn, including no move to freeze its own automatic pay increase of $4,700 a year for 2009. They didn't have to vote for a pay raise. They have rigged it now so the raise is automatic. Freshman Rep. Harry Mitchell, a Democrat, attempted to stop it, but it never came out of committee. Outrage, anyone?
The media largely skipped the story last week that the group Judicial Watch found that Speaker Nancy Pelosi's aides fussed about the need to have high-level military aircraft like the Gulfstream G-5 at Pelosi's beck and call: "It is my understanding there are NO G-5s available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable ...The Speaker will want to know where the planes are," Kay King wrote. In another note, when told a certain type of aircraft would not be available, King complained: "This is not good news, and we will have some very disappointed folks, as well as a very upset speaker."
Do you remember when Pelosi pledged to clean out a Republican culture of corruption and "drain the swamp" of self-interest? That was news then. But now that she is exposed as even more corrupt? ABC, CBS, NBC and NPR all skipped the Air Pelosi story. Fox News had it, and CNN covered it -- on the contrarian Lou Dobbs show.
Every once in a blue moon, a reporter will file a story that breaks from the pack. On Feb. 16, ABC reporter Jonathan Karl found footage of congressmen lecturing auto executives about superfluous jet travel, and then reported that members of Congress regularly travel the globe on the taxpayer's dime. Ten members and their spouses traveled via the Air Force at that time to Brussels, Vienna, Paris and the Bavarian Alps. "We asked how much this cost," Karl insisted. "But the amount taxpayers spend on military travel for Congress is a tightly guarded secret. The cheapest charter flight we could find was $200,000. Military air would cost more. How much more? Neither Congress nor the Pentagon would tell us."
So much for the vaunted transparency of the Obama era. But it was only one story.
Karl even confronted liberal Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York about his $14,000 in transportation costs for a trip to London. "I didn't go to England," Ackerman claimed. Karl said the record had his name on a three-day trip to Britain. Ackerman revised his remarks: "Oh, I represented the United States Congress." When asked how he spent 14 grand in taxpayer money, Ackerman blamed staff: "Whatever the airline costs, I don't book the flights."
How does this dismissive answer make Ackerman or his Congressional colleagues look any different than insensitive AIG executives?
Good for Jonathan Karl. Where is everyone else?
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
A World Gone Mad
A World Gone Mad
Michael Reagan
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
It is said that "whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad." Even the most cursory glance at this nation's current banking crisis would strongly suggest that the deities are out to get us.
Plainly said, our entire credit system -- the basis upon which the economy rests -- has gone stark raving mad. If you don't believe that, I suggest you take a look at where the various bailouts have left us, or the current phony furor over the AIG bonus payments that resulted from the actions of members of Congress and Obama administration.
A case in point: For the last few months I have been attempting to refinance my mortgage in order to take advantage of those juicy below-5 percent interest rates my bank is advertising. Just about every day I approach my bank's branch manager to see if this is the day I will qualify.
Yesterday when I complained anew about my inability to qualify for refinancing my mortgage despite the fact that I faithfully make my monthly mortgage payments, the bank manager told me that she -- a bank executive -- was in the same boat as I am.
Get this. She is a single mother who has worked for my bank for more than 20 years and has risen to the key position of branch bank manager -- the equivalent of being the president of a local independent bank -- no small potatoes.
She told me that she had not only been told that she wasn't qualified to refinance her own mortgage, but was just informed that her equity line of credit had also been cancelled, as if she were some kind of irresponsible credit risk.
If that's the case with her, it's obvious that I have zero chance of refinancing my mortgage.
Both of us are financially stable individuals with substantial incomes. We pay our bills on time, have proven to be fiscally responsible, and own houses with values much in excess of the amounts of our mortgages.
The sole reason for the fact that we cannot qualify for refinancing has nothing to do with our own stable financial situations and everything to do with insane government regulations so complicated they defy any attempts to justify or even understand them.
Simply put, if your house is worth more than government regulations say it can be, you are automatically unqualified to apply for refinancing. Nothing else matters. You're just plain out of luck.
This of course is just one small example of the wackiness now gripping our economy. Mysteries abound, and the greatest among them is just why a motley crew of members of Congress and Obama administration officials are not behind bars instead of dictating the kind of regulatory madness cited above.
Among those who should be wearing prison pinstripes are Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd and his House colleague, Rep. Barney Frank of the socialist republic of Massachusetts.
This Dodd character is something else. The head of the Senate Banking Committee, he gets a favorable mortgage from a now out-of-business lender, and took enormous contributions from AIG, which has given him $280,000 in political fund raising. Moreover he got the most from Fannie and Freddie's PACs and employees, a healthy $133,900 since 1989.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., got more than $40,000 in campaign donations from Fannie since 1989 -- and was once romantically involved with a male Fannie Mae executive.
When the House pushed for reform of Fannie/Freddie when Republicans were in control of Congress, Chris Dodd killed it in the Senate Banking Committee.
Al Hubbard, former head of the National Economic Council, asked, "Where was Dodd? Where was Frank? Where the recipients of Fannie/Freddie money were during the years in which Fannie Mae's fraudulent business practices were exposed?
"They were in the pockets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and busy telling us that no problem existed -- and that regulators who reported the irregularities were racists. They sold us out -- and the media has let them off the hook."
And, by the way, guess who wrote the stipulation that AGI must make those bonus payments? Right. None other than Chris Dodd.
As Karl Rove has said, "All of this bad stuff on Wall Street happened because people got greedy and the greed started at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Michael Reagan
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
It is said that "whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad." Even the most cursory glance at this nation's current banking crisis would strongly suggest that the deities are out to get us.
Plainly said, our entire credit system -- the basis upon which the economy rests -- has gone stark raving mad. If you don't believe that, I suggest you take a look at where the various bailouts have left us, or the current phony furor over the AIG bonus payments that resulted from the actions of members of Congress and Obama administration.
A case in point: For the last few months I have been attempting to refinance my mortgage in order to take advantage of those juicy below-5 percent interest rates my bank is advertising. Just about every day I approach my bank's branch manager to see if this is the day I will qualify.
Yesterday when I complained anew about my inability to qualify for refinancing my mortgage despite the fact that I faithfully make my monthly mortgage payments, the bank manager told me that she -- a bank executive -- was in the same boat as I am.
Get this. She is a single mother who has worked for my bank for more than 20 years and has risen to the key position of branch bank manager -- the equivalent of being the president of a local independent bank -- no small potatoes.
She told me that she had not only been told that she wasn't qualified to refinance her own mortgage, but was just informed that her equity line of credit had also been cancelled, as if she were some kind of irresponsible credit risk.
If that's the case with her, it's obvious that I have zero chance of refinancing my mortgage.
Both of us are financially stable individuals with substantial incomes. We pay our bills on time, have proven to be fiscally responsible, and own houses with values much in excess of the amounts of our mortgages.
The sole reason for the fact that we cannot qualify for refinancing has nothing to do with our own stable financial situations and everything to do with insane government regulations so complicated they defy any attempts to justify or even understand them.
Simply put, if your house is worth more than government regulations say it can be, you are automatically unqualified to apply for refinancing. Nothing else matters. You're just plain out of luck.
This of course is just one small example of the wackiness now gripping our economy. Mysteries abound, and the greatest among them is just why a motley crew of members of Congress and Obama administration officials are not behind bars instead of dictating the kind of regulatory madness cited above.
Among those who should be wearing prison pinstripes are Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd and his House colleague, Rep. Barney Frank of the socialist republic of Massachusetts.
This Dodd character is something else. The head of the Senate Banking Committee, he gets a favorable mortgage from a now out-of-business lender, and took enormous contributions from AIG, which has given him $280,000 in political fund raising. Moreover he got the most from Fannie and Freddie's PACs and employees, a healthy $133,900 since 1989.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., got more than $40,000 in campaign donations from Fannie since 1989 -- and was once romantically involved with a male Fannie Mae executive.
When the House pushed for reform of Fannie/Freddie when Republicans were in control of Congress, Chris Dodd killed it in the Senate Banking Committee.
Al Hubbard, former head of the National Economic Council, asked, "Where was Dodd? Where was Frank? Where the recipients of Fannie/Freddie money were during the years in which Fannie Mae's fraudulent business practices were exposed?
"They were in the pockets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and busy telling us that no problem existed -- and that regulators who reported the irregularities were racists. They sold us out -- and the media has let them off the hook."
And, by the way, guess who wrote the stipulation that AGI must make those bonus payments? Right. None other than Chris Dodd.
As Karl Rove has said, "All of this bad stuff on Wall Street happened because people got greedy and the greed started at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
5 Ways that Insanity Has Become the New Normal
Five Ways that Insanity Has Become the New Normal in America
John Hawkins
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
"In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. ...(T)he pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning...visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors." -- Clay Shirky in an explanation of the downfall of the newspaper business that also describes what's happening in America.
Since Barack Obama has been elected, gun sales and copies of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged have flown off the shelves. Meanwhile, there's a Russian academic all over the news predicting that America will soon collapse, "tea parties" springing up all over the country, and the stock market has been doing a great impression of Michael Richards' career since he left Seinfeld.
Is that because people have gone crazy? No, it's the reaction of sane people to the crazy as a football bat insanity that has begun to pass for conventional wisdom in large swathes of America. Living in this country today is like sitting in the back seat of a car that's hurtling towards the edge of a cliff at a hundred miles an hour while the driver fiddles with the radio and the guy in the passenger seat mocks the very idea of using brakes.
When sheer insanity becomes the new normal, people who can admit that the emperor has no clothes are left to point out:
The Global Warming Fraud: There are few things stranger than watching a "debate" over global warming. One side constantly quotes scientific facts, makes logical arguments, and tries to appeal to reason. These people are called "anti-science" by the side that "argues" by comparing their opponents to Holocaust deniers, spins apocalyptic doomsday scenarios out of whole cloth, and is constantly dinged for stretching the truth on the few scientific facts they do talk about. These people are the ones who supposedly "put science first" in the debate.
Meanwhile, the earth has been getting warmer and colder since it was formed, the planet has been considerably warmer in the past than it is today, and the earth is currently cooling, not warming. Yet and still, our President intends to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a Cap and Trade scheme that will spike energy costs into the stratosphere so that we can solve this non-existent "problem."
The Lawsuit Lottery: In our legal system, you can injure yourself doing something utterly stupid, sue someone who just happened to be in the vicinity while you acted like a lunatic, and if you get lucky, you can walk away with millions of dollars while he's driven out of business. It's like playing the lottery, except your odds of winning are much better.
The evidence of how warped our legal system has become is all around us. It's difficult to find an obstetrician in some parts of the country because they've been sued out of existence. In California, it's legal to sue good Samaritans who try to help people who've been injured. Many people and corporations actually settle lawsuits that they know they would eventually win because it's cheaper and less of a hassle than defending themselves in court because our system, in most cases, provides no compensation whatsoever for being the target of a meritless lawsuit.
This illness in our justice system goes all the way up to the Supreme Court, where we have four justices who believe in actually sticking to the Constitution and four who vote for whichever result best serves liberalism. That means whether a law is ruled unconstitutional or not may often depend on little more than whether Anthony Kennedy got enough sleep or is a little cranky because his lunch was delivered late. Justice is supposed to be blind, but we've gone one step further in America and made it random.
Demonizing Success and Rewarding Failure: In America, we have a government that rewards people for failure. If you lose your job, we will incentivize you not to get back to work with unemployment insurance. If you stay out of work long enough, then we'll give you welfare and more money via a "tax credit." If you don't pay your mortgage, then we'll help you out with that, too. Is your corporation going out of business? Then we'll bail you out. Long story short, if you're failing in life, then we will give you goodies to reward you for it.
On the other hand, successful people are suspect, just by virtue of their success and therefore, they must be punished. At a time when taxes are already so high that corporations are fleeing overseas and even the Treasury Secretary is a tax cheat, the President is planning massive tax hikes on both successful individuals and corporations. After all, how are we going to reward all of life's losers if we don't take the money from people who have succeeded? In order to justify killing the Goose who laid the Golden Egg, successful people are regularly vilified as greedy nuisances to society who should be thrilled to have the money they worked for confiscated by people who hate them so it can be handed to people far less industrious than themselves.
But, what you subsidize, you get more of and what you penalize, you decrease. That's one of the oldest and simplest lessons in the book; yet it's one we never seem to learn.
Spending Money Like We're Never Going To Have To Pay It Back: Here's Peter Schweizer describing how the Soviet Union was broken by Reagan.
First of all, the Soviet Union has been in economic crisis, there was an economic crisis from the very beginning in 1917, but they'd always been able to figure out a way, working internationally, to bail out their system. They got western businesses that would set up industries, they got western banks to loan them money, they were able to get peace agreements with the West that would provide temporary relief to their economy. So the Soviet economy was always in crisis but they'd always been bailed out by the West. Reagan's administration is really the only one that never did that.
So, the Soviet Union relied on its enemies to keep it financially afloat and when they refused to do it any longer, it was the beginning of the end. Well, replace the "Soviet Union" with the "United States" and "The West" with "China" and ask yourself: doesn't it seem more than a little familiar?
What happens if China decides one day that they'd like to see us go the way of the Soviet Union and does to us what we did to the Reds? Do we end up with skyrocketing inflation that makes a dollar today worth ten cents tomorrow? Do we end up passing on such large debts onto our children that we will guarantee that they can never have the opportunity to grow up in the sort of great country that we did? The people spending our money? The frightening thing is not that they're coming up with different answers; it's that they're not even asking the questions.
Our Topsy-Turvy Approach To Illegal Immigration: Although we have laws on the books designed to prevent illegal immigration, they are systematically ignored or the people in charge of enforcing them are deliberately understaffed so they can't fulfill their duties. Bizarrely, people who merely suggest that the laws on our books should actually be enforced are derided as racists and nativists. Worse yet, to suggest that tens of millions of uneducated foreigners, many of whom don't speak the language or obey our laws, should not be able to benefit from breaking our laws by staying here permanently is treated as beyond the pale. Why, how dare we "break up the families" of people who have been shamelessly breaking our laws for so long that they've had time to start a family here?
Despite the fact that we've already had a "one time only amnesty" and drug violence is now regularly spilling over our borders, advocates of amnesty are unfazed. In fact, under Barack Obama we've actually gotten to the point where we're prosecuting people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio for enforcing our immigration laws even as we create 300,000 jobs for illegal immigrants with the stimulus plan.
If you don't have borders, you don't have a country -- and if we believe we can turn tens of millions of poor, uneducated, non-English speaking people with no love for our nation or respect for our laws, into productive, well assimilated, loyal Americans merely by granting them citizenship -- then we're engaging in exactly the sort of magical thinking that has helped undermine and destroy more than a few nations -- including most notably, the Roman Empire.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
John Hawkins
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
"In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. ...(T)he pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning...visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors." -- Clay Shirky in an explanation of the downfall of the newspaper business that also describes what's happening in America.
Since Barack Obama has been elected, gun sales and copies of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged have flown off the shelves. Meanwhile, there's a Russian academic all over the news predicting that America will soon collapse, "tea parties" springing up all over the country, and the stock market has been doing a great impression of Michael Richards' career since he left Seinfeld.
Is that because people have gone crazy? No, it's the reaction of sane people to the crazy as a football bat insanity that has begun to pass for conventional wisdom in large swathes of America. Living in this country today is like sitting in the back seat of a car that's hurtling towards the edge of a cliff at a hundred miles an hour while the driver fiddles with the radio and the guy in the passenger seat mocks the very idea of using brakes.
When sheer insanity becomes the new normal, people who can admit that the emperor has no clothes are left to point out:
The Global Warming Fraud: There are few things stranger than watching a "debate" over global warming. One side constantly quotes scientific facts, makes logical arguments, and tries to appeal to reason. These people are called "anti-science" by the side that "argues" by comparing their opponents to Holocaust deniers, spins apocalyptic doomsday scenarios out of whole cloth, and is constantly dinged for stretching the truth on the few scientific facts they do talk about. These people are the ones who supposedly "put science first" in the debate.
Meanwhile, the earth has been getting warmer and colder since it was formed, the planet has been considerably warmer in the past than it is today, and the earth is currently cooling, not warming. Yet and still, our President intends to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a Cap and Trade scheme that will spike energy costs into the stratosphere so that we can solve this non-existent "problem."
The Lawsuit Lottery: In our legal system, you can injure yourself doing something utterly stupid, sue someone who just happened to be in the vicinity while you acted like a lunatic, and if you get lucky, you can walk away with millions of dollars while he's driven out of business. It's like playing the lottery, except your odds of winning are much better.
The evidence of how warped our legal system has become is all around us. It's difficult to find an obstetrician in some parts of the country because they've been sued out of existence. In California, it's legal to sue good Samaritans who try to help people who've been injured. Many people and corporations actually settle lawsuits that they know they would eventually win because it's cheaper and less of a hassle than defending themselves in court because our system, in most cases, provides no compensation whatsoever for being the target of a meritless lawsuit.
This illness in our justice system goes all the way up to the Supreme Court, where we have four justices who believe in actually sticking to the Constitution and four who vote for whichever result best serves liberalism. That means whether a law is ruled unconstitutional or not may often depend on little more than whether Anthony Kennedy got enough sleep or is a little cranky because his lunch was delivered late. Justice is supposed to be blind, but we've gone one step further in America and made it random.
Demonizing Success and Rewarding Failure: In America, we have a government that rewards people for failure. If you lose your job, we will incentivize you not to get back to work with unemployment insurance. If you stay out of work long enough, then we'll give you welfare and more money via a "tax credit." If you don't pay your mortgage, then we'll help you out with that, too. Is your corporation going out of business? Then we'll bail you out. Long story short, if you're failing in life, then we will give you goodies to reward you for it.
On the other hand, successful people are suspect, just by virtue of their success and therefore, they must be punished. At a time when taxes are already so high that corporations are fleeing overseas and even the Treasury Secretary is a tax cheat, the President is planning massive tax hikes on both successful individuals and corporations. After all, how are we going to reward all of life's losers if we don't take the money from people who have succeeded? In order to justify killing the Goose who laid the Golden Egg, successful people are regularly vilified as greedy nuisances to society who should be thrilled to have the money they worked for confiscated by people who hate them so it can be handed to people far less industrious than themselves.
But, what you subsidize, you get more of and what you penalize, you decrease. That's one of the oldest and simplest lessons in the book; yet it's one we never seem to learn.
Spending Money Like We're Never Going To Have To Pay It Back: Here's Peter Schweizer describing how the Soviet Union was broken by Reagan.
First of all, the Soviet Union has been in economic crisis, there was an economic crisis from the very beginning in 1917, but they'd always been able to figure out a way, working internationally, to bail out their system. They got western businesses that would set up industries, they got western banks to loan them money, they were able to get peace agreements with the West that would provide temporary relief to their economy. So the Soviet economy was always in crisis but they'd always been bailed out by the West. Reagan's administration is really the only one that never did that.
So, the Soviet Union relied on its enemies to keep it financially afloat and when they refused to do it any longer, it was the beginning of the end. Well, replace the "Soviet Union" with the "United States" and "The West" with "China" and ask yourself: doesn't it seem more than a little familiar?
What happens if China decides one day that they'd like to see us go the way of the Soviet Union and does to us what we did to the Reds? Do we end up with skyrocketing inflation that makes a dollar today worth ten cents tomorrow? Do we end up passing on such large debts onto our children that we will guarantee that they can never have the opportunity to grow up in the sort of great country that we did? The people spending our money? The frightening thing is not that they're coming up with different answers; it's that they're not even asking the questions.
Our Topsy-Turvy Approach To Illegal Immigration: Although we have laws on the books designed to prevent illegal immigration, they are systematically ignored or the people in charge of enforcing them are deliberately understaffed so they can't fulfill their duties. Bizarrely, people who merely suggest that the laws on our books should actually be enforced are derided as racists and nativists. Worse yet, to suggest that tens of millions of uneducated foreigners, many of whom don't speak the language or obey our laws, should not be able to benefit from breaking our laws by staying here permanently is treated as beyond the pale. Why, how dare we "break up the families" of people who have been shamelessly breaking our laws for so long that they've had time to start a family here?
Despite the fact that we've already had a "one time only amnesty" and drug violence is now regularly spilling over our borders, advocates of amnesty are unfazed. In fact, under Barack Obama we've actually gotten to the point where we're prosecuting people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio for enforcing our immigration laws even as we create 300,000 jobs for illegal immigrants with the stimulus plan.
If you don't have borders, you don't have a country -- and if we believe we can turn tens of millions of poor, uneducated, non-English speaking people with no love for our nation or respect for our laws, into productive, well assimilated, loyal Americans merely by granting them citizenship -- then we're engaging in exactly the sort of magical thinking that has helped undermine and destroy more than a few nations -- including most notably, the Roman Empire.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
The Republican Civil War
The Republican Civil War
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
As if it is not enough that they have been decimated by the Democrats in the past couple of elections, the Republican survivors are now turning their guns on each other.
At the heart of these internal battles have been attacks on Rush Limbaugh by Republicans who imagine themselves to be so much more sophisticated because they are so much more in step with the political fashions of the time.
New Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele's cheap shot at Rush's program as "ugly" set off the latest round of in-fighting. That is the kind of thing that is usually said by liberals who have never listened to the program.
Regular listeners to the Rush Limbaugh program or subscribers to the Limbaugh newsletter know that both contain far more factual information and in-depth analysis than in the programs or writings of pundits with more of a ponderous tone or intellectual airs.
Why Michael Steele found it necessary to say such a thing-- except as a sop to the liberal intelligentsia-- is one of the many mysteries of the Republican Party. Steele has since apologized to Rush but you cannot unring the bell.
More important, the mindset it betrays is at the heart of many of the problems of the Republican Party, going back for years, long before Michael Steele appeared on the scene.
There has long been an element of the Republican Party that has felt a need to distance themselves from people who stand up for conservative principles, whether those with principles have been Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh or whomever.
The latest example is John McCain's daughter, who has said how embarrassed she is by having to explain Ann Coulter to her friends. If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter, both the Republican Party and the country would be in even worse shape than they are now, for there are extremely few articulate Republican politicians who can make the case for any principle. Certainly Ms. McCain's father is not one of them.
The only time John McCain led Barack Obama in the polls last year was after Governor Sarah Palin joined the ticket. The economic collapse doomed their candidacies but McCain would have had no chance at all with another inconsistent and inarticulate Republican like himself on the ticket.
Yet many in the Republican Party seem to have felt as embarrassed by Governor Palin as they have been by others who articulated principles, instead of trying to be in step with the fashions of the time-- fashions set by liberals.
Maybe those Republicans who put a high value on being accepted in elite circles should be embarrassed by the narrowness of their elite friends, who disdain or demonize people whose principles they disagree with, instead of answering their arguments.
There has even been an undercurrent among some Republicans of a sense that it is time to move away from the image of Ronald Reagan, to update the party and court newer and less embarrassing segments of the voters than their current base.
There is certainly a lot to be said for inviting wider segments of the population to join you, by explaining how your principles benefit the country in general, and those segments in particular. But that is fundamentally different from abandoning your principles in hopes of attracting new votes with opportunism.
No segment of the population has lost more by the agendas of the liberal constituencies of the Democratic Party than the black population.
The teachers' unions, environmental fanatics and the ACLU are just some of the groups to whose interests blacks have been sacrificed wholesale. Lousy education and high crime rates in the ghettos, and unaffordable housing elsewhere with building restrictions, are devastating prices to pay for liberalism.
Yet the Republicans have never articulated that argument, and their opportunism in trying to get black votes by becoming imitation Democrats has failed miserably for decades on end.
There seemed, for an all too brief moment, that Michael Steele might have been the one to provide such much overdue articulation-- and possibly he still might, but only if he stays out of the Republican trap of trying to appease opponents by throwing supporters to the wolves.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
As if it is not enough that they have been decimated by the Democrats in the past couple of elections, the Republican survivors are now turning their guns on each other.
At the heart of these internal battles have been attacks on Rush Limbaugh by Republicans who imagine themselves to be so much more sophisticated because they are so much more in step with the political fashions of the time.
New Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele's cheap shot at Rush's program as "ugly" set off the latest round of in-fighting. That is the kind of thing that is usually said by liberals who have never listened to the program.
Regular listeners to the Rush Limbaugh program or subscribers to the Limbaugh newsletter know that both contain far more factual information and in-depth analysis than in the programs or writings of pundits with more of a ponderous tone or intellectual airs.
Why Michael Steele found it necessary to say such a thing-- except as a sop to the liberal intelligentsia-- is one of the many mysteries of the Republican Party. Steele has since apologized to Rush but you cannot unring the bell.
More important, the mindset it betrays is at the heart of many of the problems of the Republican Party, going back for years, long before Michael Steele appeared on the scene.
There has long been an element of the Republican Party that has felt a need to distance themselves from people who stand up for conservative principles, whether those with principles have been Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh or whomever.
The latest example is John McCain's daughter, who has said how embarrassed she is by having to explain Ann Coulter to her friends. If it wasn't for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter, both the Republican Party and the country would be in even worse shape than they are now, for there are extremely few articulate Republican politicians who can make the case for any principle. Certainly Ms. McCain's father is not one of them.
The only time John McCain led Barack Obama in the polls last year was after Governor Sarah Palin joined the ticket. The economic collapse doomed their candidacies but McCain would have had no chance at all with another inconsistent and inarticulate Republican like himself on the ticket.
Yet many in the Republican Party seem to have felt as embarrassed by Governor Palin as they have been by others who articulated principles, instead of trying to be in step with the fashions of the time-- fashions set by liberals.
Maybe those Republicans who put a high value on being accepted in elite circles should be embarrassed by the narrowness of their elite friends, who disdain or demonize people whose principles they disagree with, instead of answering their arguments.
There has even been an undercurrent among some Republicans of a sense that it is time to move away from the image of Ronald Reagan, to update the party and court newer and less embarrassing segments of the voters than their current base.
There is certainly a lot to be said for inviting wider segments of the population to join you, by explaining how your principles benefit the country in general, and those segments in particular. But that is fundamentally different from abandoning your principles in hopes of attracting new votes with opportunism.
No segment of the population has lost more by the agendas of the liberal constituencies of the Democratic Party than the black population.
The teachers' unions, environmental fanatics and the ACLU are just some of the groups to whose interests blacks have been sacrificed wholesale. Lousy education and high crime rates in the ghettos, and unaffordable housing elsewhere with building restrictions, are devastating prices to pay for liberalism.
Yet the Republicans have never articulated that argument, and their opportunism in trying to get black votes by becoming imitation Democrats has failed miserably for decades on end.
There seemed, for an all too brief moment, that Michael Steele might have been the one to provide such much overdue articulation-- and possibly he still might, but only if he stays out of the Republican trap of trying to appease opponents by throwing supporters to the wolves.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Calling on Democratic Capitalists.
Calling on Democratic Capitalists
David Limbaugh
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
I don't use the term "Marxist," in connection with President Barack Obama's policies, lightly or even to inflame, but to express my genuine fear that if we don't put the brakes on his agenda to remake America in his image, we'll end up both enslaving and bankrupting America by the end of his tenure.
Perhaps conservatives used the term "Marxist," "socialist" or even "Commie" too loosely on some occasions to describe the liberals' political sympathies, but that debatable question now seems moot, given our new president's overt contempt for capitalism.
This guy makes Bill Clinton look like John Birch, and yet to this day, few Democrats have dissociated from him. So where are the Democrats who have always professed their conservatism? How can they sit by idly as we witness this administration's ongoing assault on capitalism?
Where are those liberals who have always insisted that on economic issues, they differ with conservatives only in degree, not in kind -- that they are actually committed capitalists who just believe in somewhat greater government control, a somewhat larger safety net and marginally higher taxation? Where are those Democrats who, for the past 20 years, have been condemning soaring deficits and an exploding national debt? Is there anything Obama could say or do that would cause them to break ranks in defense of the capitalistic system to which they claim allegiance? With a few exceptions, it does not appear so.
When President Clinton initiated his class warfare rhetoric against Reaganomics and "trickledown economics," when he described a slightly slowed-down economy as "the worst economy in 50 years," he was mostly trying to get elected, and it worked. Remember "it's the economy, stupid"? True, he did raise taxes when elected, and he and his wife tried to nationalize health care. But in the end, he was more about himself than permanently transforming the country.
While President Obama may also be narcissistic, as some have noted -- consider his utter lack of discomfort at being deified -- he is truly devoted to changing this nation structurally and has inherited an ideal "crisis" climate in which to actualize his ambitions.
When Obama said he wanted to spread the wealth around, we now know (many of us knew then) that he wasn't talking about fooling around at the margins. He was talking about major wealth redistribution and punitive action against upper-income earners. While this may tickle the ears of grass-roots class warriors, it's the anthem of America's destruction.
When government decides how much money each of us should have, we are no longer free. Make no mistake: Obama will not use the tax code and other weapons of government just to fund government services, but to determine how income is distributed. Don't let the difference be lost on you.
When Obama says that "there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few … and (that) it is our duty to change it," he is not just saying that higher-income earners don't pay their fair share of taxes (which is absurd on its face). He is saying that they make too much money -- as if that is any of his or government's business.
While liberals deny this, all income groups did better under the Reagan tax cuts, from the lowest 20 percent to the highest 20 percent, precisely because marginal rate cuts provided an incentive for production by enhancing the connection between efforts and rewards. People work harder when they're allowed to keep greater portions of the fruits of their labor. Production increases across the board, as does prosperity, thus the term "trickle down."
Conversely, when you separate efforts from rewards, you get less production and less prosperity. True, the higher-income earners earn and keep less, but that does not do middle- or lower-income earners any good.
When the coercive power of government is used to equalize incomes, it guarantees less prosperity across the board and spreads the misery, which is one of the many reasons Marxism and socialism have failed everywhere they've been tried.
President Obama manifestly believes that government has the right, nay, the duty to take "from each according to his abilities" and distribute to each "according to his needs," or at least the needs as defined by the omniscient, omnibenevolent government. Whether you call that Marxism or euphemize it as "managed capitalism," it is a formula for ending America's unique prosperity and liberty, as there exists an inextricable connection between economic liberty and political liberty.
Never in our history have we been headed at such breakneck speed toward our own financial, political and cultural destruction. One can only pray that before it's too late, enough Democrats will come to their senses and help get this freight train under control.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
David Limbaugh
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
I don't use the term "Marxist," in connection with President Barack Obama's policies, lightly or even to inflame, but to express my genuine fear that if we don't put the brakes on his agenda to remake America in his image, we'll end up both enslaving and bankrupting America by the end of his tenure.
Perhaps conservatives used the term "Marxist," "socialist" or even "Commie" too loosely on some occasions to describe the liberals' political sympathies, but that debatable question now seems moot, given our new president's overt contempt for capitalism.
This guy makes Bill Clinton look like John Birch, and yet to this day, few Democrats have dissociated from him. So where are the Democrats who have always professed their conservatism? How can they sit by idly as we witness this administration's ongoing assault on capitalism?
Where are those liberals who have always insisted that on economic issues, they differ with conservatives only in degree, not in kind -- that they are actually committed capitalists who just believe in somewhat greater government control, a somewhat larger safety net and marginally higher taxation? Where are those Democrats who, for the past 20 years, have been condemning soaring deficits and an exploding national debt? Is there anything Obama could say or do that would cause them to break ranks in defense of the capitalistic system to which they claim allegiance? With a few exceptions, it does not appear so.
When President Clinton initiated his class warfare rhetoric against Reaganomics and "trickledown economics," when he described a slightly slowed-down economy as "the worst economy in 50 years," he was mostly trying to get elected, and it worked. Remember "it's the economy, stupid"? True, he did raise taxes when elected, and he and his wife tried to nationalize health care. But in the end, he was more about himself than permanently transforming the country.
While President Obama may also be narcissistic, as some have noted -- consider his utter lack of discomfort at being deified -- he is truly devoted to changing this nation structurally and has inherited an ideal "crisis" climate in which to actualize his ambitions.
When Obama said he wanted to spread the wealth around, we now know (many of us knew then) that he wasn't talking about fooling around at the margins. He was talking about major wealth redistribution and punitive action against upper-income earners. While this may tickle the ears of grass-roots class warriors, it's the anthem of America's destruction.
When government decides how much money each of us should have, we are no longer free. Make no mistake: Obama will not use the tax code and other weapons of government just to fund government services, but to determine how income is distributed. Don't let the difference be lost on you.
When Obama says that "there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few … and (that) it is our duty to change it," he is not just saying that higher-income earners don't pay their fair share of taxes (which is absurd on its face). He is saying that they make too much money -- as if that is any of his or government's business.
While liberals deny this, all income groups did better under the Reagan tax cuts, from the lowest 20 percent to the highest 20 percent, precisely because marginal rate cuts provided an incentive for production by enhancing the connection between efforts and rewards. People work harder when they're allowed to keep greater portions of the fruits of their labor. Production increases across the board, as does prosperity, thus the term "trickle down."
Conversely, when you separate efforts from rewards, you get less production and less prosperity. True, the higher-income earners earn and keep less, but that does not do middle- or lower-income earners any good.
When the coercive power of government is used to equalize incomes, it guarantees less prosperity across the board and spreads the misery, which is one of the many reasons Marxism and socialism have failed everywhere they've been tried.
President Obama manifestly believes that government has the right, nay, the duty to take "from each according to his abilities" and distribute to each "according to his needs," or at least the needs as defined by the omniscient, omnibenevolent government. Whether you call that Marxism or euphemize it as "managed capitalism," it is a formula for ending America's unique prosperity and liberty, as there exists an inextricable connection between economic liberty and political liberty.
Never in our history have we been headed at such breakneck speed toward our own financial, political and cultural destruction. One can only pray that before it's too late, enough Democrats will come to their senses and help get this freight train under control.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
The AIG Outrage.
The AIG Outrage
Lawrence Kudlow
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
This whole AIG fiasco -- where the entire political class is suddenly screaming over bonuses paid to derivative traders in AIG’s financial-products division -- is just a complete farce. What it really shows is how the government has completely bungled the AIG takeover. Blame the Bush administration and the Obama administration. It also shows, once again, why the government shouldn’t run anything, because it cannot run anything.
AIG should have been placed in bankruptcy last fall under some sort of government sponsorship. While in bankruptcy, all the salary contracts (and every other AIG contract) would have been nullified and voided. At the same time, there would have been an orderly liquidation and sale of AIG’s assets and separate divisions.
But as things stand now, there still is no clear roadmap for the dissolution of AIG. There are ideas, but nothing is set in concrete.
And as for the $165 million or so in AIG bonus payments, the Obama administration -- including the president, Treasury man Tim Geithner, and economic adviser Larry Summers -- knew all about them many months ago. They were undoubtedly informed of this during the White House transition.
So there’s no big surprise. Nobody should be shocked. But President Obama is doing his best play-acting ever. He knows full well that the nationwide outcry against federal bailouts and takeovers is only going to get worse on his watch. His poll numbers are already falling, and this AIG episode is going to pull them down more.
Incidentally, has anybody asked Team Obama why it is more than willing to break mortgage contracts with a bankruptcy-judge cram-down, but won’t cram-down compensation agreements for AIG, despite the fact that the U.S. government owns the company? Kind of odd, don’t you think?
The Wall Street Journal editors get it right when they ask: Who’s in charge and what’s the game plan? The whole AIG story is an outrage.
What’s more, AIG is acting as a conduit for taxpayer money that is being sent to dozens of derivative counterparties, including foreign banks and American banks like Goldman Sachs. If we’re going to bail out all these other firms, why not bail them out in full taxpayer view? Why is the money being laundered furtively through AIG? And where exactly is the end game for AIG? How are the taxpayers going to be repaid?
And what is Treasury man Geithner’s role in all this? He appears to be the biggest bungler in what has become a massive bungling. My CNBC friend and colleague Charlie Gasparino thinks Geithner can’t survive this. I am inclined to agree.
Nevertheless, behind the furor over AIG, there is some good news to report on the banking front. This week’s decision by the Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to allow cash-flow accounting rather than distressed last-trade mark-to-market accounting will go a long way toward solving the banking and toxic-asset problem.
Many experts believe mortgage-backed securities and other toxic assets are being serviced in a timely cash-flow manner for at least 70 cents on the dollar. This is so important. Under mark-to-market, many of these assets were written down to 20 cents on the dollar, destroying bank profits and capital. But now banks can value these assets in economic terms based on positive cash flows, rather than in distressed markets that have virtually no meaning.
Actually, when the FASB rules are adopted in the next few weeks, it will be interesting to see if a pro forma re-estimate of the last year reveals that banks have been far more profitable and have much more capital than this crazy mark-to-market accounting would have us believe.
Sharp-eyed banking analyst Dick Bove has argued that most bank losses have been non-cash -- i.e., mark-to-market write-downs. Take those fictitious write-downs away and you are left with a much healthier banking picture. This is huge in terms of solving the credit crisis.
In a column last week I suggested that not one more dime of government money is necessary for the banks. Instead, the marriage of the cash-flow valuation of bank assets and the upward-sloping Treasury yield curve will do the trick. Net interest margins are rising as banks purchase money for near-zero interest and loan it out at profitable rates. And the new mark-to-market reform will allow banks to hold their toxic assets for several more years and work them out -- just as they did back in the 1990s.
We don’t need more TARP. We don’t need to take over more big banks. And we don’t need to have the government run things it simply isn’t capable of running.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Lawrence Kudlow
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
This whole AIG fiasco -- where the entire political class is suddenly screaming over bonuses paid to derivative traders in AIG’s financial-products division -- is just a complete farce. What it really shows is how the government has completely bungled the AIG takeover. Blame the Bush administration and the Obama administration. It also shows, once again, why the government shouldn’t run anything, because it cannot run anything.
AIG should have been placed in bankruptcy last fall under some sort of government sponsorship. While in bankruptcy, all the salary contracts (and every other AIG contract) would have been nullified and voided. At the same time, there would have been an orderly liquidation and sale of AIG’s assets and separate divisions.
But as things stand now, there still is no clear roadmap for the dissolution of AIG. There are ideas, but nothing is set in concrete.
And as for the $165 million or so in AIG bonus payments, the Obama administration -- including the president, Treasury man Tim Geithner, and economic adviser Larry Summers -- knew all about them many months ago. They were undoubtedly informed of this during the White House transition.
So there’s no big surprise. Nobody should be shocked. But President Obama is doing his best play-acting ever. He knows full well that the nationwide outcry against federal bailouts and takeovers is only going to get worse on his watch. His poll numbers are already falling, and this AIG episode is going to pull them down more.
Incidentally, has anybody asked Team Obama why it is more than willing to break mortgage contracts with a bankruptcy-judge cram-down, but won’t cram-down compensation agreements for AIG, despite the fact that the U.S. government owns the company? Kind of odd, don’t you think?
The Wall Street Journal editors get it right when they ask: Who’s in charge and what’s the game plan? The whole AIG story is an outrage.
What’s more, AIG is acting as a conduit for taxpayer money that is being sent to dozens of derivative counterparties, including foreign banks and American banks like Goldman Sachs. If we’re going to bail out all these other firms, why not bail them out in full taxpayer view? Why is the money being laundered furtively through AIG? And where exactly is the end game for AIG? How are the taxpayers going to be repaid?
And what is Treasury man Geithner’s role in all this? He appears to be the biggest bungler in what has become a massive bungling. My CNBC friend and colleague Charlie Gasparino thinks Geithner can’t survive this. I am inclined to agree.
Nevertheless, behind the furor over AIG, there is some good news to report on the banking front. This week’s decision by the Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to allow cash-flow accounting rather than distressed last-trade mark-to-market accounting will go a long way toward solving the banking and toxic-asset problem.
Many experts believe mortgage-backed securities and other toxic assets are being serviced in a timely cash-flow manner for at least 70 cents on the dollar. This is so important. Under mark-to-market, many of these assets were written down to 20 cents on the dollar, destroying bank profits and capital. But now banks can value these assets in economic terms based on positive cash flows, rather than in distressed markets that have virtually no meaning.
Actually, when the FASB rules are adopted in the next few weeks, it will be interesting to see if a pro forma re-estimate of the last year reveals that banks have been far more profitable and have much more capital than this crazy mark-to-market accounting would have us believe.
Sharp-eyed banking analyst Dick Bove has argued that most bank losses have been non-cash -- i.e., mark-to-market write-downs. Take those fictitious write-downs away and you are left with a much healthier banking picture. This is huge in terms of solving the credit crisis.
In a column last week I suggested that not one more dime of government money is necessary for the banks. Instead, the marriage of the cash-flow valuation of bank assets and the upward-sloping Treasury yield curve will do the trick. Net interest margins are rising as banks purchase money for near-zero interest and loan it out at profitable rates. And the new mark-to-market reform will allow banks to hold their toxic assets for several more years and work them out -- just as they did back in the 1990s.
We don’t need more TARP. We don’t need to take over more big banks. And we don’t need to have the government run things it simply isn’t capable of running.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Schmoo is Alive and Well and Living in the White House.
The Schmoo is Alive and Well and Living in the White House
Burt Prelutsky
Friday, March 13, 2009
Although I would like to believe that every single article I write springs full-grown from my brain as Athena was alleged to have sprung from the head of Zeus, such is not always the case. Sometimes the notion results from a confluence of events, which is a fancy way of saying I don’t pay for other people’s ideas. I steal them.
For instance, in the past couple of weeks, I received e-mails from two far-flung friends that sparked an observation. In the first, Steve Finefrock of Oklahoma reminded me of the shmoo, a creature introduced over 50 years ago by Al Capp in his comic strip, “Li’l Abner.” The shmoo was a magical little pear-shaped entity that lived only to serve man’s wishes. If it even thought a person was hungry, it would die happily to feed him. It had the ability to taste like chicken or steak, its eyes could be used for buttons and its whiskers made fine toothpicks.
Another friend, Don Melquist of Arizona, reminded me of cargo cults. During World War II, many such cults sprang up in the South Pacific. When thousands upon thousands of G.I.s suddenly showed up on sparsely populated islands, mysteriously appearing from the skies and the ocean, bringing with them food, radios, medicine, watches, candy and Coca-Cola, the villagers naturally thought their prayers had been answered. In much the same way that dogs are said to be awe-struck by the hunting abilities of their masters, who come home bearing armloads of edibles, the natives had good reason to assume that the gods had taken up residence. Long after the war ended, the islanders constructed piers and carved out airstrips in hopes of their return.
It’s difficult to see much difference between the denizens of Dogpatch, the cargo cultists and Obama’s disciples, all of whom seem to believe they’re entitled to health care, day care, food stamps, college tuition, abortions, a house, a car, a plasma TV and collagen-enhanced lips. It isn’t enough that Obama is a messiah for the non-religious and the number one fantasy sex symbol for America’s women and Chris Matthews, he’s also Santa Claus.
When I see what Obama and his elves, Pelosi and Reid, are doing to America, spending money like a teenager who’s stumbled upon Paris Hilton’s Platinum Card, it makes me fear that, thanks to the last election, America has done to itself what no foreign invader could have hoped to accomplish. If we’re not a Third World nation by the time 2012 rolls around, it won’t be for lack of trying.
Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t have been better off in the long run if we had remained an English colony. After all, for all the rotten stuff that the Europeans did in Africa, it seems to me they did a better job of educating the people and utilizing the natural resources than the native leaders have done since gaining independence. I’m sure that will be construed as a racist statement, but I’ll stick to it until someone shows me how Africans were worse off under the English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese, than they’ve been under the various black tyrants who have turned the continent into one huge cesspool of ignorance, poverty, slavery and all-around barbarism.
Lest you think I only have it in for black leaders in the U.S. and abroad, let me hasten to say that California, where the majority of leading villains are Caucasians, is hardly heaven on earth. The entire state is one huge asylum, and the inmates running the place are named Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Jerry Brown, Henry Waxman, Gavin Newsome and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although it appeared six years ago that Schwarzenegger would be a big improvement over Gray Davis, it turned out he only had bigger muscles. But, then, so does Barbara Boxer. The fact is we’d have been better off electing Mrs. Schwarzenegger. At least with Maria Shriver running things, we’d have been spared all these years of having to listen to her hubby’s annoying voice.
As most of you probably know, Herr Schwarzenegger and his liberal chums in the state legislature recently hiked state and sales taxes to record heights because they had run up huge deficits in recent years. Things got so bad, the lawmakers announced at one point they were going to fire nonessential state employees. Nobody seemed to wonder why, if they were nonessential, we taxpayers had been paying their salaries for, lo, these many years.
In conclusion, it occurs to me that termites and bees do a far better job of selecting their queens than we humans do electing our leaders.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Burt Prelutsky
Friday, March 13, 2009
Although I would like to believe that every single article I write springs full-grown from my brain as Athena was alleged to have sprung from the head of Zeus, such is not always the case. Sometimes the notion results from a confluence of events, which is a fancy way of saying I don’t pay for other people’s ideas. I steal them.
For instance, in the past couple of weeks, I received e-mails from two far-flung friends that sparked an observation. In the first, Steve Finefrock of Oklahoma reminded me of the shmoo, a creature introduced over 50 years ago by Al Capp in his comic strip, “Li’l Abner.” The shmoo was a magical little pear-shaped entity that lived only to serve man’s wishes. If it even thought a person was hungry, it would die happily to feed him. It had the ability to taste like chicken or steak, its eyes could be used for buttons and its whiskers made fine toothpicks.
Another friend, Don Melquist of Arizona, reminded me of cargo cults. During World War II, many such cults sprang up in the South Pacific. When thousands upon thousands of G.I.s suddenly showed up on sparsely populated islands, mysteriously appearing from the skies and the ocean, bringing with them food, radios, medicine, watches, candy and Coca-Cola, the villagers naturally thought their prayers had been answered. In much the same way that dogs are said to be awe-struck by the hunting abilities of their masters, who come home bearing armloads of edibles, the natives had good reason to assume that the gods had taken up residence. Long after the war ended, the islanders constructed piers and carved out airstrips in hopes of their return.
It’s difficult to see much difference between the denizens of Dogpatch, the cargo cultists and Obama’s disciples, all of whom seem to believe they’re entitled to health care, day care, food stamps, college tuition, abortions, a house, a car, a plasma TV and collagen-enhanced lips. It isn’t enough that Obama is a messiah for the non-religious and the number one fantasy sex symbol for America’s women and Chris Matthews, he’s also Santa Claus.
When I see what Obama and his elves, Pelosi and Reid, are doing to America, spending money like a teenager who’s stumbled upon Paris Hilton’s Platinum Card, it makes me fear that, thanks to the last election, America has done to itself what no foreign invader could have hoped to accomplish. If we’re not a Third World nation by the time 2012 rolls around, it won’t be for lack of trying.
Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t have been better off in the long run if we had remained an English colony. After all, for all the rotten stuff that the Europeans did in Africa, it seems to me they did a better job of educating the people and utilizing the natural resources than the native leaders have done since gaining independence. I’m sure that will be construed as a racist statement, but I’ll stick to it until someone shows me how Africans were worse off under the English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese, than they’ve been under the various black tyrants who have turned the continent into one huge cesspool of ignorance, poverty, slavery and all-around barbarism.
Lest you think I only have it in for black leaders in the U.S. and abroad, let me hasten to say that California, where the majority of leading villains are Caucasians, is hardly heaven on earth. The entire state is one huge asylum, and the inmates running the place are named Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Jerry Brown, Henry Waxman, Gavin Newsome and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although it appeared six years ago that Schwarzenegger would be a big improvement over Gray Davis, it turned out he only had bigger muscles. But, then, so does Barbara Boxer. The fact is we’d have been better off electing Mrs. Schwarzenegger. At least with Maria Shriver running things, we’d have been spared all these years of having to listen to her hubby’s annoying voice.
As most of you probably know, Herr Schwarzenegger and his liberal chums in the state legislature recently hiked state and sales taxes to record heights because they had run up huge deficits in recent years. Things got so bad, the lawmakers announced at one point they were going to fire nonessential state employees. Nobody seemed to wonder why, if they were nonessential, we taxpayers had been paying their salaries for, lo, these many years.
In conclusion, it occurs to me that termites and bees do a far better job of selecting their queens than we humans do electing our leaders.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Good Ideas.
Good Ideas
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
During winter months, I work out 10 minutes on the treadmill and lift weights at seven stations four mornings a week. Over the years, during the spring through fall months, I racked up about 2,000 miles on my road bike. This level of exercise helps account for why, at 73 years, I'm in such good health and physical fitness. So my question to you is whether you think regular exercise is a good idea. I think the answer is definitely yes, if nothing other than its beneficial effects on health care costs. Since exercise is a good idea, would you support a congressional mandate that all Americans engage in regular exercise?
Instead of simply saying, "Williams, you're a lunatic!" and rejecting such a congressional mandate out of hand, let's ask why it should be rejected. We should keep in mind that there's precedent for congressionally mandated measures to protect our health and safety. Seatbelt and helmet laws are examples. If you're in an accident and wind up a vegetable, you will be a burden on taxpayers; therefore, it's argued, Congress has a right to mandate seatbelt and helmet usage. Wouldn't the same reasoning apply to people who might burden our health care system because of obesity or sedentary lifestyles? If it is a good idea for Congress to force us to buckle up and wear a helmet on a motorcycle, isn't it also a good idea to force us to regularly exercise?
There is only one question to ask were there to be a debate whether Congress should mandate regular exercise. Whether regular exercise is a good idea or a bad idea is entirely irrelevant. The only relevant question is: Is it permissible under the Constitution? That means we must examine the Constitution to see whether it authorizes Congress to mandate exercise. From my reading, the Constitution grants no such authority.
You say, "Aha, Williams, you've blown it this time. What about Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which says Congress shall provide for the 'general welfare of the United States.'? Surely, healthy Americans contribute to the nation's general welfare." That's precisely the response I'd expect from your average law professor, congressman or derelict U.S. Supreme Court justice. Let's look at what the men who wrote the Constitution had to say about its general welfare clause. In a letter to Edmund Pendleton, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, said, "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one ..." Madison also said, "With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." Thomas Jefferson said, "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
If you compare the vision of our nation's founders to the behavior of today's Congress, White House and U.S. Supreme Court, you would have to conclude that there is no longer rule of law where there is a set of general rules applicable to all persons. Today, we are commanded by legislative thugs who, with Supreme Court sanction, issue orders commanding particular people to do particular things. Most Americans neither understand nor appreciate the spirit and letter of the Constitution and accept Congress' arbitrary orders and privileges based upon status.
What to do? Thomas Jefferson advised, "Whensoever the General (federal) Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." That bit of Jeffersonian advice is dangerous. While Congress does not have constitutional authority for most of what it does, it does have police and military power to inflict great pain and punishment for disobedience.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
During winter months, I work out 10 minutes on the treadmill and lift weights at seven stations four mornings a week. Over the years, during the spring through fall months, I racked up about 2,000 miles on my road bike. This level of exercise helps account for why, at 73 years, I'm in such good health and physical fitness. So my question to you is whether you think regular exercise is a good idea. I think the answer is definitely yes, if nothing other than its beneficial effects on health care costs. Since exercise is a good idea, would you support a congressional mandate that all Americans engage in regular exercise?
Instead of simply saying, "Williams, you're a lunatic!" and rejecting such a congressional mandate out of hand, let's ask why it should be rejected. We should keep in mind that there's precedent for congressionally mandated measures to protect our health and safety. Seatbelt and helmet laws are examples. If you're in an accident and wind up a vegetable, you will be a burden on taxpayers; therefore, it's argued, Congress has a right to mandate seatbelt and helmet usage. Wouldn't the same reasoning apply to people who might burden our health care system because of obesity or sedentary lifestyles? If it is a good idea for Congress to force us to buckle up and wear a helmet on a motorcycle, isn't it also a good idea to force us to regularly exercise?
There is only one question to ask were there to be a debate whether Congress should mandate regular exercise. Whether regular exercise is a good idea or a bad idea is entirely irrelevant. The only relevant question is: Is it permissible under the Constitution? That means we must examine the Constitution to see whether it authorizes Congress to mandate exercise. From my reading, the Constitution grants no such authority.
You say, "Aha, Williams, you've blown it this time. What about Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which says Congress shall provide for the 'general welfare of the United States.'? Surely, healthy Americans contribute to the nation's general welfare." That's precisely the response I'd expect from your average law professor, congressman or derelict U.S. Supreme Court justice. Let's look at what the men who wrote the Constitution had to say about its general welfare clause. In a letter to Edmund Pendleton, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, said, "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one ..." Madison also said, "With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." Thomas Jefferson said, "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
If you compare the vision of our nation's founders to the behavior of today's Congress, White House and U.S. Supreme Court, you would have to conclude that there is no longer rule of law where there is a set of general rules applicable to all persons. Today, we are commanded by legislative thugs who, with Supreme Court sanction, issue orders commanding particular people to do particular things. Most Americans neither understand nor appreciate the spirit and letter of the Constitution and accept Congress' arbitrary orders and privileges based upon status.
What to do? Thomas Jefferson advised, "Whensoever the General (federal) Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." That bit of Jeffersonian advice is dangerous. While Congress does not have constitutional authority for most of what it does, it does have police and military power to inflict great pain and punishment for disobedience.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
The Dogma of Mad Science.
The Dogma of Mad Science
Robert Knight
Monday, March 09, 2009
Dr. Frankenstein would have felt “empowered” on Monday, March 9.
That’s the day the Obama Administration not only reversed the Bush Administration’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, but announced that it was freeing science from outside interference, such as people’s moral qualms.
Can’t you just picture the fictional monster creator jumping for joy?
The Obama Administration issued a memorandum “aimed at insulating scientific decisions across the federal government from political influence,” according to The Washington Post.
Think of it: No more villagers or conservative Christians lurking outside with torches and pitchforks! Scientists will be able to do anything that strikes their fancy! And with taxpayer funding!
Unlike those troglodyte Bush lackeys, the Obama Administration, we’re told, is all about pure science, untouched by something as sordid as politics. Translated, that means scientists can kill human embryos for medical research, create and distribute abortion pills without any public input, and systematically shun any contrary information.
If they have any questions about how to do this, they can consult Al Gore’s followers, who have been frantically plugging leaks in their global warming dam as fast and as effectively as the proverbial Dutch boy. What, they found a new arctic ice floe the size of California? What, a cooling period is underway as sunspots wane? Pay no attention!
Likewise, as data pour in that challenge fundamental liberal assumptions, government medicrats under the Obama mandate will feel free to ignore it in the name of science. Never mind that adult stem cells have provided medical advances for more than 70 diseases or conditions, and that embryonic lines have yielded nothing. Or that some doctors have very serious reservations about the safety of patients using procedures derived from embryonic cells.
Harold Varmus, who co-chairs President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, said the president is determined “to use sound scientific practice, responsible practice of science and evidence, instead of dogma in developing federal policy.”
Of course, one man’s “dogma” is another man’s “principle.” Take respect for human life, for instance. That’s a dogma that has governed medical and scientific practice since Hippocrates’ day. In the United States, that dogma is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence’s guarantee of the “unalienable” rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for each individual.
At Dr. Frankenstein’s fictional lab, no such binding dogma would have interfered with the pure science going on. Nor did it hamper the real life, gruesome experiments of Dr. Mengele during the Third Reich.
Dogmas do not disappear; they just give way to new ones. The dogma that will now apparently drive federal policy is the idea that if science can do something, than it should do it. But science is merely a tool, not an ethical system. To say that science itself should determine its own purposes is like saying that a hammer can pound anything it wants, independent of the carpenter’s wishes.
Before the Obama Administration plunges fully into mad science, it might consider a warning from Dr. Bernadine Healy, M.D., former director of the National Institutes of Health. In a March 4 column for U.S. News & World Report, Dr. Healy said this:
“Even for strong backers of embryonic stem cell research, the decision is no longer as self-evident as it was … In fact, during the first six weeks of Obama's term, several events reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and diabetes, are obsolete. The most sobering: a report from Israel published in PLoS Medicine in late February that shows embryonic stem cells injected into patients can cause disabling if not deadly tumors. .. [this case] is neither an anomaly nor a surprise, but one feared by many scientists.”
If the Obama Administration cannot be convinced that it is simply wrong to kill human embryos, perhaps some sobering examples that the resulting techniques may be harmful might persuade them to put on the brakes.
But they would have to shed the rose-colored glasses of embryonic stem cell dogma and take a fresh look at the evidence.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Robert Knight
Monday, March 09, 2009
Dr. Frankenstein would have felt “empowered” on Monday, March 9.
That’s the day the Obama Administration not only reversed the Bush Administration’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, but announced that it was freeing science from outside interference, such as people’s moral qualms.
Can’t you just picture the fictional monster creator jumping for joy?
The Obama Administration issued a memorandum “aimed at insulating scientific decisions across the federal government from political influence,” according to The Washington Post.
Think of it: No more villagers or conservative Christians lurking outside with torches and pitchforks! Scientists will be able to do anything that strikes their fancy! And with taxpayer funding!
Unlike those troglodyte Bush lackeys, the Obama Administration, we’re told, is all about pure science, untouched by something as sordid as politics. Translated, that means scientists can kill human embryos for medical research, create and distribute abortion pills without any public input, and systematically shun any contrary information.
If they have any questions about how to do this, they can consult Al Gore’s followers, who have been frantically plugging leaks in their global warming dam as fast and as effectively as the proverbial Dutch boy. What, they found a new arctic ice floe the size of California? What, a cooling period is underway as sunspots wane? Pay no attention!
Likewise, as data pour in that challenge fundamental liberal assumptions, government medicrats under the Obama mandate will feel free to ignore it in the name of science. Never mind that adult stem cells have provided medical advances for more than 70 diseases or conditions, and that embryonic lines have yielded nothing. Or that some doctors have very serious reservations about the safety of patients using procedures derived from embryonic cells.
Harold Varmus, who co-chairs President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, said the president is determined “to use sound scientific practice, responsible practice of science and evidence, instead of dogma in developing federal policy.”
Of course, one man’s “dogma” is another man’s “principle.” Take respect for human life, for instance. That’s a dogma that has governed medical and scientific practice since Hippocrates’ day. In the United States, that dogma is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence’s guarantee of the “unalienable” rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for each individual.
At Dr. Frankenstein’s fictional lab, no such binding dogma would have interfered with the pure science going on. Nor did it hamper the real life, gruesome experiments of Dr. Mengele during the Third Reich.
Dogmas do not disappear; they just give way to new ones. The dogma that will now apparently drive federal policy is the idea that if science can do something, than it should do it. But science is merely a tool, not an ethical system. To say that science itself should determine its own purposes is like saying that a hammer can pound anything it wants, independent of the carpenter’s wishes.
Before the Obama Administration plunges fully into mad science, it might consider a warning from Dr. Bernadine Healy, M.D., former director of the National Institutes of Health. In a March 4 column for U.S. News & World Report, Dr. Healy said this:
“Even for strong backers of embryonic stem cell research, the decision is no longer as self-evident as it was … In fact, during the first six weeks of Obama's term, several events reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and diabetes, are obsolete. The most sobering: a report from Israel published in PLoS Medicine in late February that shows embryonic stem cells injected into patients can cause disabling if not deadly tumors. .. [this case] is neither an anomaly nor a surprise, but one feared by many scientists.”
If the Obama Administration cannot be convinced that it is simply wrong to kill human embryos, perhaps some sobering examples that the resulting techniques may be harmful might persuade them to put on the brakes.
But they would have to shed the rose-colored glasses of embryonic stem cell dogma and take a fresh look at the evidence.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Does Obama Know What He Is Doing?
Does Obama Know What He Is Doing?
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Conservatives are so aghast at the huge spending going on in Washington and the $1.75trillion deficit (13 percent of our gross domestic product) it is causing them to overlook an even more basic question about the president: Is he competent? Does he know what he is doing?
To be specific: Does he know how to do anything other than spend money? His stimulus package, of course, took no special ability. He left the details of the projects up to the House Democrats, who are more than willing to fill in the blanks. But his two other major initiatives -- his banking and mortgage relief plans -- are both flawed and highly unlikely to solve their respective problems. Indeed, they are so wide of the mark that one has to ask if Obama is not only a radical but also an incompetent.
The bank bailout plan seems to be largely stillborn. Having wished that the private sector would flock to invest in toxic assets if they are offered the right incentives, the treasury secretary is still hoping. Crossing his fingers seems to have replaced effective policy in his planning. To date, no massive infusion of private sector capital seems in view, and Washington is doing little more than writing checks on its overdrawn account to prop up the failing banks. That doesn't take a genius. But the difficult task of relieving the banks of toxic assets so they can rekindle the flow of loans seems to be beyond the ability of the president and his administration.
But conservatives can dismiss the utter failure of Obama's bank rescue plan, saying that he doesn't really want it to succeed. He probably wants to nationalize the banks -- and never let them go. But he can't say that, yet, and has to make a good show of doing all he can to rescue them before swallowing them whole.
But then came Obama's mortgage rescue plan, an equally flawed proposal. Clearly, Obama, liberal that he is, wants his rescue plan to work. He is anxious to bail out homeowners facing foreclosure. Those are his constituents, after all. But the mortgage rescue plan he has proposed will fall far short of the mark.
Incredibly, it excludes anyone who has lost their job and can't afford to make their payments, even if they were to spend 31 percent of their income trying to do so. If you can't come close to affording your mortgage, even if only because of a hopefully temporary loss of employment, forget about it. Obama is not going to help you.
Nor will he help you if your mortgage exceeds your home's value. One out of five mortgages now fall into this category. Obviously, the fall in property values occasioned by the depression will put more and more homeowners in this category. Certainly, a great many of those who need relief to keep their homes find that the amount of their loan exceeds the value of the underlying house and land. But they can expect no help from Obama's rescue plan.
Why would a liberal be so callous? Why would he leave so many out in the cold? Could it be that Obama simply lacks the competence to figure out how to help these folks? Could it be that he cannot devise a counter to his financial advisors who presumably wanted to exclude these folks?
And ... who induced these poor folks to buy homes they couldn't afford, anyway? It was the Clinton administration's Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros who urged Fannie Mae to spend 42 percent of its money buying mortgages for lower-income people and who suggested that they no longer require down payments. And it was his successor, Andrew Cuomo, who upped the ante to 50 percent of the Fannie portfolio. After Democrats inveigled people to buy homes they cannot afford, how can they justify passing a plan that excludes them from assistance?
It appears that Obama is at sea when it comes to financial policy, economic recovery planning and credit rescue efforts. We are not only stuck with a radical and a socialist, but possibly an incompetent one at that!
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Conservatives are so aghast at the huge spending going on in Washington and the $1.75trillion deficit (13 percent of our gross domestic product) it is causing them to overlook an even more basic question about the president: Is he competent? Does he know what he is doing?
To be specific: Does he know how to do anything other than spend money? His stimulus package, of course, took no special ability. He left the details of the projects up to the House Democrats, who are more than willing to fill in the blanks. But his two other major initiatives -- his banking and mortgage relief plans -- are both flawed and highly unlikely to solve their respective problems. Indeed, they are so wide of the mark that one has to ask if Obama is not only a radical but also an incompetent.
The bank bailout plan seems to be largely stillborn. Having wished that the private sector would flock to invest in toxic assets if they are offered the right incentives, the treasury secretary is still hoping. Crossing his fingers seems to have replaced effective policy in his planning. To date, no massive infusion of private sector capital seems in view, and Washington is doing little more than writing checks on its overdrawn account to prop up the failing banks. That doesn't take a genius. But the difficult task of relieving the banks of toxic assets so they can rekindle the flow of loans seems to be beyond the ability of the president and his administration.
But conservatives can dismiss the utter failure of Obama's bank rescue plan, saying that he doesn't really want it to succeed. He probably wants to nationalize the banks -- and never let them go. But he can't say that, yet, and has to make a good show of doing all he can to rescue them before swallowing them whole.
But then came Obama's mortgage rescue plan, an equally flawed proposal. Clearly, Obama, liberal that he is, wants his rescue plan to work. He is anxious to bail out homeowners facing foreclosure. Those are his constituents, after all. But the mortgage rescue plan he has proposed will fall far short of the mark.
Incredibly, it excludes anyone who has lost their job and can't afford to make their payments, even if they were to spend 31 percent of their income trying to do so. If you can't come close to affording your mortgage, even if only because of a hopefully temporary loss of employment, forget about it. Obama is not going to help you.
Nor will he help you if your mortgage exceeds your home's value. One out of five mortgages now fall into this category. Obviously, the fall in property values occasioned by the depression will put more and more homeowners in this category. Certainly, a great many of those who need relief to keep their homes find that the amount of their loan exceeds the value of the underlying house and land. But they can expect no help from Obama's rescue plan.
Why would a liberal be so callous? Why would he leave so many out in the cold? Could it be that Obama simply lacks the competence to figure out how to help these folks? Could it be that he cannot devise a counter to his financial advisors who presumably wanted to exclude these folks?
And ... who induced these poor folks to buy homes they couldn't afford, anyway? It was the Clinton administration's Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros who urged Fannie Mae to spend 42 percent of its money buying mortgages for lower-income people and who suggested that they no longer require down payments. And it was his successor, Andrew Cuomo, who upped the ante to 50 percent of the Fannie portfolio. After Democrats inveigled people to buy homes they cannot afford, how can they justify passing a plan that excludes them from assistance?
It appears that Obama is at sea when it comes to financial policy, economic recovery planning and credit rescue efforts. We are not only stuck with a radical and a socialist, but possibly an incompetent one at that!
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