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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

9/26/2008

Sundown in America

sundown.jpg

America is facing the most dangerous crisis in the history of our nation. It is not simply an economic crisis. It is a crisis whose outcome may well determine whether America continues to survive as a representative republic ... and whether America remains strong enough to face the massing, determined enemy outside of its borders.

The ‘economic’ portion of this crisis did not occur by accident. It occurred, in large part, as a result of leftist ‘social engineers’ who are intent on circumventing the Constitution to use pretended altruism in order to expand their power and further implement their left-leaning ideological agenda. And they cannot succeed unless the noble foundations upon which our republic was built are completely dismantled.

The current economic crisis, and all of its ramifications, represent a giant step in that insidiously evil crusade.

This economic meltdown is occurring largely as a result of socialist special interests pressuring their friends in congress to relax the underwriting standards for home mortgages. Those friends in congress used all manner of grotesque extortion and shakedown techniques, made legal through changes in law (most notably the Community Reinvestment Act), to pressure the banking/mortgage industry to grant hundreds of thousands of loans to low-income and minority citizens whose economic backgrounds exhibited little or no ability to repay those loans.

From the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s The CRA Scam and its Defenders:

When the CRA was created during the Carter administration, the administration also funded with tax dollars numerous ‘community groups’ that have helped the Fed, the Comptroller of the Currency, and other federal regulatory agencies to enforce the act. Under the CRA, if a bank wants to make virtually any change in its business operations — merging, opening up a new branch, getting into a new line of business — it must first prove to regulators that it has made ‘enough’ loans to the government's preferred borrowers. The (partially) tax-funded ‘community groups’ like ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) can file petitions with regulators that stop the bank's activities in their tracks, perhaps defeating them altogether. The banks routinely buy off ACORN and other ‘community groups’ by giving them millions of dollars as well as promising to make even more dubious loans.

Yes, there were other contributors to this meltdown, but years of such pressure and pandering to special interests were the major contributing factor in the crisis we are facing today (and tomorrow ... and beyond).

One of those special interest groups that participated broadly in this dramatic change in banking/mortgage procedures was indeed ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), one of the largest radical left-wing groups in America.

Barack Obama’s affiliation with ACORN is longstanding and deep. He ran an ACORN-sponsored massive voter registration effort (which was later accused, and continues to be accused, of engaging in massive voter fraud). He later became a trainer for the group, as well as its lawyer in numerous election law cases. He received strong financial support from ACORN in all of his election campaigns, and his affiliation with the group and its radical activities remains strong today.

Fast forward to September 26, 2008:

Many involved in the current congressional negotiations on the economic bailout proposal are attempting to make the public aware that the proposal being pushed by the democrats would have a large portion of the taxpayer-funded ‘bailout’ money diverted to whom?

ACORN.

Is the public becoming aware of this fact? No. Why? Because those in congress who are attempting to sound the alert are being righteously ignored by the mainstream media.

Lindsey Graham (R-SC) stated today, … this deal that’s on the table now is not a very good deal. Twenty percent of the money that should go to retire debt that will be created to solve this problem winds up in a housing organization called ACORN that is an absolute ill-run enterprise, and I can’t believe we would take money away from debt retirement to put it in a housing program that doesn’t work.

Wrap your minds around this concept, if you can.

Our current economic crisis threatens America’s existence on five major fronts:

(1) It threatens to plunder from the American taxpayers for generations to come, reducing their standard of living, threatening their hard-earned retirement security, and placing debt upon the shoulders of their children not yet born. And why? In order to correct the ‘errors’ made by our leadership, and brought about by the pressures of special interest groups.

(2) It is already succeeding in nationalizing major sectors of American private enterprise, in the banking and insurance industries ... with more to come.

(3) No matter the bailout plan that is adopted, more government regulation over the private sector will be enacted, dramatically increasing bureaucratic government interference in the free market system – i.e., placing yet another socialist anchor around the neck of our capitalist system.

(4) No matter the bailout plan that is adopted, our national debt will increase beyond our ability to pay it down, to the point where our national priorities will, of necessity, be transformed from one in which our safety, security and sovereignty take a perilous second place to our need to merely pay down the money that we borrowed to get ourselves out of this economic meltdown.

(5) Unless those who played an activist role in fomenting this crisis are sought out, investigated, and prosecuted where called for, and unless the citizenry demands an accounting and a broad excising of the corruption in their leadership, once the dust settles -- and it will settle, temporarily, after any bailout program takes effect -- nothing will change. No reform will occur. And our future will be filled with more of the same -- adding to our debt, taking away from our liberties, and putting our survival in jeopardy.

Now reflect back on the fact that the current leader in the race for the presidency has had, and continues to have, close activist ties with a radical organization that played a major role in the above cataclysm.

Now ask yourself this important question:

Why is ninety-nine percent of the American electorate unaware of that connection?

President Bush delivered an address to the nation two nights ago. The subject of that address was the current economic crisis.

In his attempt to explain the causes of this crisis, he insinuated that it all started because America’s economy was considered so healthy that it attracted investors from all over the world. As a result, banks and financial institutions were awash in money, and that state of affairs planted the seed for this debacle.

Our President offered up the greatest whitewash of the reasons for this catastrophe imaginable.

John McCain and Barack Obama participated in the first of four televised presidential debates tonight. Because of recent developments, despite the fact that foreign policy was scheduled to be the topic of the debate, much of their debate centered on our economic ills.

Barack Obama pointed the finger of blame for those ills at 'eight years of Bush economic policies -- policies that were embraced by John McCain.'

Did John McCain refute that argument by finally educating the American public regarding his opponent’s personal affiliation with a radical leftwing organization that played a significant role in creating the sub prime debacle? No, he simply spoke in platitudes about how we must all work together, in a bipartisan way, in order to solve this monumental problem.

I am aware (as are many of you) of the major causes of this crisis. And if I am aware of the part that Obama and those of his political ideology played in this catastrophe, surely my President and my candidate are as well.

What is keeping them from making that association a major issue in this election?

At the bottom of this travesty (the magnitude of which I don’t believe we have seen in either our or our parents’ lifetimes) are four crucial, potentially deadly, considerations:

(1) The virtually unbridled power of the mainstream media – who routinely turn our focus (because we allow them to) toward superficial nonsense, and away from information that would be extraordinarily dangerous to those whose ideology they share.

(2) The fact that, even during their deliberations in attempting to solve this economic crisis, most of the democrats in Washington still do not consider the safety and prosperity of the people of this country to be their main focus. Their main focus, even in these troubling times, is the amassing of power and the implementation of a leftist ideological agenda. Why else, when the economic (and possibly physical) safety and security of every American is hanging in the balance, would they still be attempting to divert a large portion of this gargantuan, taxpayer-funded bailout into the pockets of a left-leaning organization bent on social engineering (and an organization that played an activist role in the catastrophe to begin with)?

(3) If republicans in congress resort to compromise, as they have so often done over the past eighteen years, they will have committed the final betrayal. They will have saddled the American taxpayer with an unbearable burden – in the form of financial extortion, the crumbling of our capitalist system through the nationalization of private enterprise, and the granting of oversight powers to the government that were never envisioned by our Founders – all of which conditions are expressly forbidden by our Constitution. Individual liberty will be the major casualty – with security and sovereignty to follow, a distant, but definite, second.

(4) Congress, bowing to the enormous pressure of powerful, radical left-wing special interest groups, started this crisis by pressuring, in an entirely unconstitutional manner, the banking/mortgage industry to do what their special interest lobbyists wanted. Yet among the major end results of any temporary bailout will be the granting of significantly more 'oversight' powers, this time made legal by 'post-meltdown' legislation. The government will be granted enormous additional power to look over the shoulder of private industry and dictate the parameters under which it can function. Talk about rewarding crime, and positioning the country for more of the same ... now legalized ... much deeper, and much more threatening to our capitalist foundations.

Any bailout proposal ... with or without the 'let's-reward-the-perpetrators' provision ... will sound the death knell for our republic. It will not be a 'necessary evil'. It will represent our final compromise with evil. Things may improve temporarily ... maybe even for a year or two ... mainly because the American citizenry, and the world, have allowed themselves to be lulled into a phony state of complacency. But the next time the (both monetary and moral) debt collector comes calling, we will have nothing left to give him.

I have little faith that the electorate will recognize the genuine nature of the man they are about to elect to the presidency. The media will not allow it. And the citizenry is too lazy to look beyond the mainstream media for answers.

I have little faith that our ‘leadership’ in Washington will once again begin to represent the best interests of the people. The corruption is too deep, and the power of special interests is too unwieldy and unaccountable, and growing moreso every day.

There are enemies at the gate. Enemies of the sort that the world has never known – who see it as their destiny to conform us to their image, or see us dead. When they decide to break down that gate in a brutal manner that goes far beyond the taking of three thousand innocent lives in two skyscrapers, an office building, and a commercial airplane, they will find little resistance. Not because the people within the gates weren’t once rugged individualists who valued freedom ... but because they no longer are.

Turn out the lights on your way out. It's over.

~ joanie

85 comments:

Anonymous said...

The most frightening part in all of this is that more than half of the voters right now intend to vote for a man without really knowing what he's done and what he stands for. The media has seen to that.

I wish your tone weren't so negative Joanie, but I understand why it is. Try to enjoy your weekend with your hubbie!

Anonymous said...

Don't worry.

Be happy.

Anonymous said...

Joanie, look at this post from Free Republic:

Tell Congress & President Bush: NOT ONE PENNY FOR ACORN! PHONE FAX WRITE NOW!

Anonymous said...

From The Bulletin (Philadelphia's Family Newspaper):

Economists and financial experts interviewed pointed especially to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) and the Associated Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) as major culprits.

Thomas DiLorenzo, Ph.D., an economics professor at Loyola College in Maryland, who specializes in housing finance, said, "I think they [ACORN and the CRA] were very major contributors to the current crisis. For 30 years they compelled banks to make loans to unqualified people.


Root Causes Behind Wall Street's Financial Woes

Anonymous said...

Central banking, central bankers, fiat currencies, debt based economies and criminal politicians are a financial cancer upon the masses.

Anonymous said...

dantheman: That was a great link, which led me to a flood of other links. Congress has simply been throwing our tax dollars at ACORN for years and years. As best I can tell, the timeline goes like this:

1. The Housing and Community Development Act of 1974.

2. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977.

3. The Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act of 1990, signed by George HW Bush. (his signing statement)

4. The Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act of 1998 (H.R. 2158) (Bill Clinton's signing statement)

5. The Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act of 2002. (H.R. 2620) (Bill Clinton's Signing Statement

Note that these last two bills contain appropriations for the Space Program, EPA, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I never could understand why the Space Shuttle program had to compete for funding with low-income-housing, but that's how Washington works (or doesn't work).

Anonymous said...

Oh, here's another one which should be #4 on the list:

H.R. 3474 - The Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994. (Bill Clinton's Transmittal Letter)

Sec. 104. Establishment of National Fund for Community Development Banking.

Anonymous said...

Take heart Joanie. I think as it gets closer to November 4th the voters will start to realize what an imposter Obama is and many of them who were leaning toward him will come to their senses.

As to Congress, I don't know how we can even begin to get rid of the corruption there. That's a lot more worrisome.

Anonymous said...

Why the Treasury TARP bailout is flawed by Nouriel Roubini:

"The Treasury plan (even in its current version agreed with Congress) is very poorly conceived and does not contain many of the key elements of a sound and efficient and fair rescue plan. ... It is a disgrace that no professional economist was consulted by Congress or invited to present his/her views at the Congressional hearings on the Treasury rescue plan."

"Specifically, the Treasury plan does not formally provide senior preferred shares for the government in exchange for the government purchase of the toxic/illiquid assets of the financial institutions; so this rescue plan is a huge and massive bailout of the shareholders and the unsecured creditors of the firms; with $700 billion of taxpayer money the pockets of reckless bankers and investors have been made fatter under the fake argument that bailing out Wall Street was necessary to rescue Main Street from a severe recession. Instead, the restoration of the financial health of distressed financial firms could have been achieved with a cheaper and better use of public money."

"...Thus, the Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown."

Anonymous said...

The corruption is here to stay and will be made even more immovable by any bailout plan that this lot comes up with.

Good work, Joanie. All of it true.

Anonymous said...

Totally correct.

The Democratic party is a criminal organization and ACORN is their THUG ARM being used to insure they remain in power.

It’s obvious our own law enforcement agencies cannot or will not stop the crime.

They want our nation destroyed. They have almost achieved their goal.

Anonymous said...

To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

--- Thomas Jefferson

Anonymous said...

The democrats want the economy to fail. They want a depression so they can amass power and destroy the Constitution. The water is boiling and the frogs don't mind.

joanie said...

Thanks for the excellent link, Dan!

What an amazing amount of research and documentation that FReeper has done! I am in awe, and I intend to use some of his contact information, and forward it to others. I hope others will do the same.

~ joanie

joanie said...

Central banking, central bankers, fiat currencies, debt based economies and criminal politicians are a financial cancer upon the masses.

Amen!

joanie said...

John, your TARP article is an excellent source of information -- and a cause for even more anger and frustration. I have it bookmarked.

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

I share your pessimism. I see no other reasonable view of the future of America.

Anonymous said...

This needs to receive wider circulation. You need to send it to all the major newspapers and news outlets. You never know. One or two might pick it up. It's at least worth a try.

Anonymous said...

Henry Adams, descendant of two Presidents, wrote that no American dies in the country of his birth, meaning that in a lifetime the country changes into the unrecognizable. It seems that we all face that fate. There is little consolation in it but I don’t think we are going down alone. The whole globalized structure is likely to take a tumble. The maddening part is that we have been led into this debacle by fools and knaves.

Anonymous said...

Excellent article, joanie-f!

I would rather have NO bill come out of these "negotiations" than ANY bill that funds ACORN. Rather than that, I'd prefer the economy to go down in flames, and let the chips fall where they may. Enuf is enuf.

I e-mailed my two senators and congressperson yesterday to say "not one thin dime of taxpayer money for ACORN. If this bill passes with ACORN funding still in it, and I see you've voted for it, then you can kiss my vote for you goodbye forevermore."

Of course, that's a pretty toothless threat I suppose. Plus the fact is, I have never voted for any of these people ever (i.e., Kennedy, Kerry, Tsongas), and would never consider doing so.

Sigh. I gather the e-mail servers at Capitol Hill are pretty clogged up these days. I haven't had a response from any of these people, and probably won't get one. Still, as a taxpayer, I had to weigh in as strongly as I could. These people need to know that some folks are actually paying attention, and seek to hold their representatives accountable for their actions.

In theory, since both houses of Congress are in the hands of the Democrat majority, one would think that this bail-out package could pass without Republican votes. But the Dems are scared to death to do that. They NEED Republican cover; i.e., Pubbie votes to make this pig in a poke look "bi-partisan."

I hope that no Republican in Congress or the Senate will fall into this trap. One hears of all the yelling and screaming on Capitol Hill today. I imagine the reason for that is Pubbie Congress members are reminding the Dems that this "tar baby" is of their own exclusive manufacture, at the behest of the Congressional Black Caucus and their social-engineering enablers.

The Community Development Act (vintage Carter) is the Dem chicken that has finally come home to roost. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are merely "slush funds" for carrying out their social-engineering designs, and the thoroughly corrupt ACORN has been their enabler.

Further, the Dems are probably apoplectic about the prospect that the public (read: voters) will find out their presidential candidate is up to his armpits in this mess; for he is a "community organizer" with deep connections with ACORN.

So they've been trying to hang all this mess on the Bush Administration and the putative Republican mania to deregulate. Obama did this as late as last night, in the debate. This is a total fantasy! Then they claim that the "regulators" were asleep at the switch. But there was regulation of Fannie and Freddie, plus supposed congressional oversight of the regulators; the regulations were just ignored — which folks like Raines and Gorelick and Johnson probably thought they could safely do, because the Dems in Congress would give them political cover. Meanwhile, they looted the joint.

The inconvenient truth is that Republicans in both the Congress and the Senate have been making dire warnings (e.g., McCain, Shays, et al.) for years now about the impending implosion of those institutions. These warnings were poo-pooed by such as Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and the CBC.

Meanwhile, you have ACORN out there threatening to sue mortgage originators for "redlining"; i.e., applying sound fiduciary standards in the qualification of credit-worthy applicants. Much earlier, the Reno Justice Department had done likewise. The whole point was to put lower-income and minority people (including illegal aliens!) into homes they could not possibly afford.

Now if you're a mortgage originator who is threatened with being sued for not pushing loans on unqualified applicants; and you know that you are only required to hold the mortgage instrument for 45 days before you can palm it off on somebody else (usually Fannie and Freddie, who can further resell packages of such stinky loans to investors as mortgage-backed securities with implicit taxpayer guarantees behind them); then you don't care anyway whether the applicant has the ability to repay his obligation, because that's somebody else's problem (the person or institution that bought the mortgage backed security). The bad loans were off the books of the mortgage originator just as soon as the stipulated holding period expired; the sale proceeds were then in his hands; and so he's then flush with cash to repeat this maneuver, over and over again....

Thus was a house of cards constructed. Now that it's finally come crashing down — taking the housing market, the banks, and Wall Street along with it — we taxpayers are being presented with the bill for cleaning up the mess, which was not of our own making in the first place.

So much for the "socialization of risk": Let the whole people pay for the losses and evil deeds of a relatively few greedy miscreants.... Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea!

We'd continue to receive "bills" like this forevermore, unless the CORRUPTION IN CONGRESS ends, and the persons responsible for it are publicly exposed, tried, and punished.

All things considered, I think the best thing Congress can do right now is: Do nothing at all. Let the system blow up. And then people are going to start asking "Why, HOW did this happen?" And then the TRUTHFUL HISTORY of what led to this shocking debacle must be made public.

Hang the blame on who deserves it. If we don't do that, then the same kind of "stuff" is going to continue to happen forever, and the demands on the taxpayer would become infinite.

It looks to me, all things considered, that to pass this bailout would represent the final, complete socialization of America, which would instantly become a reality — in a silent, bloodless coup.

The public needs to understand that the root cause of this financial meltdown was the unconstitutional social engineering desires of a relatively small group of extreme Left progressives in Congress. They should be impeached for derilection of duty (i.e., breach of their oath of office), or at least NEVER returned to office.

As for Raines and Gorelick and Johnson, they should be prosecuted for gross fraud and malfeasance. I mean, if Ken Lay of Enron is in jail for doing just the same things as they did, then I think it's only just and fair that they should join him.

My two cents worth, FWIW.

joanie said...

Betty, your reasoning that the democrats are too cowardly to pass this bailout package without republican backing is spot on.

I have a very strong feeling, though, that the democrat extortionists will win out. The republicans on the Hill have an eighteen-year record of compromising with the left, to the point where many of them have actually adopted portions of the left's ideology, seemingly through something akin to osmosis. I guess when you hang around filth long enough, some of that filth begins to rub off indelibly.

I agree, also, that the democrats are probably 'apoplectic' (your word, and a perfect one!) in the fear that more voters will discover the ACORN connection. I don't know that their fear is justified, though. I have heard one or two snippets about ACORN on FoxNews -- the latest during an interview that one of their reporters was doing with John Fund. Oddly, as soon as he mentioned ACORN, the interviewer abruptly announced that she was out of time.

I've also heard it mentioned by Sean Hannity. So Fox is aware of ACORN/crisis/Obama connection. Why isn't the 'fair and balanced' network assigning it headline news status? It seems to me that this connection, especially in light of the democrats' intent to reward ACORN through their bailout proposal, should be shouted from the rooftops. And if not from the rooftops, then at least reported more frequently than the rest of the fluff that somehow infiltrates its way into 'headline news' status. I strongly suspect that even the most ill-informed voter would find the ACORN connection highly interesting, and worth knowing, pre-November 4th. Whether the mainstream media, Fox included, agree remains to be seen. I’m betting not.

Before the mortgage crisis hit the fan, ACORN was extorting money from banks and mortgage companies. Now they are extorting money from you and me – and using our own elected representatives as the middle man ('hit man' might be a better term).

Your analysis of the cavalier manner in which the special interests (ACORN in particular), and Fannie and Freddie, created and then sold misrepresented paper is spot on.

I believe I’m going to cross stitch the following (in duplicate), and hang it in my den here at home, and in my office:

We'd continue to receive "bills" like this forevermore, unless the CORRUPTION IN CONGRESS ends, and the persons responsible for it are publicly exposed, tried, and punished.

All things considered, I think the best thing Congress can do right now is: Do nothing at all. Let the system blow up. And then people are going to start asking "Why, HOW did this happen?" And then the TRUTHFUL HISTORY of what led to this shocking debacle must be made public ... It looks to me, all things considered, that to pass this bailout would represent the final, complete socialization of America, which would instantly become a reality — in a silent, bloodless coup.


Again, I am in complete agreement (otherwise I wouldn’t be considering going to the trouble of cross stitching) :). If there must be a (n economic) flood, of Biblical proportions, the excruciatingly painful cleansing that would result might just prove to be the painful lesson that sets America back in search of the Founders’ vision. Perhaps, rather than condoning a bailout, instead we need to, somewhat passively, simply watch the corruptors finally receive the horrendous comeuppance that they deserve. That we must suffer along with them is terribly unfair and unfortunate. But sometimes a deep and essential cleansing demands such suffering, on the part of the innocent as well.

A friend wrote to me this week, 'I find myself sitting in a high-stakes Texas hold-em game with a lot of chips in the pot that I cannot remember betting.'

Funny, isn't it? None of us remembers even sitting down at the table.

A final 'aside' ... While driving in the car today, my husband and I were talking about the election, and, in specific, the general apathy and ignorance of the electorate. Which is why I cringe every time I see a 'Get out the vote!' drive – especially the kind aired on MTV and the like, in which celebs use all manner of fluff reasoning to bring voters to the polls.

If one must be cajoled into voting, one shouldn't be voting in the first place.

After a few minutes' discussion, my husband and I decided that, in a perfect world, voters would have to walk ten miles, uphill both ways, in the dead of winter, during a blinding snowstorm, with snipers shooting at them from behind the bushes – and should have to pass a civics and current events test – in order to vote. That way, only those who are serious about voting, and willing to sacrifice in order to do so, would cast a ballot.

We acknowledged that our 'perfect franchise rules' were created tongue-in-cheek, but I suspect that each of us, in some secret corner of our mind, secretly yearns for them to bet instituted. :)

Thank you so much for your always insightful comments, betty.

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

You MUST find an outlet for this.

Anonymous said...

With a Congress like this, who needs al Qaeda?

Anonymous said...

Very well done.

Anonymous said...

Brilliantly done Joanie and I agree that we are standing at the precipice with little hope of being able to step back instead of stepping off.

Good night, America is entirely apropos. It will however, be a restless and fitful sleep.

Anonymous said...

betty boop: - That was really a well thought out post. Thanks.

If anybody's interested in hearing what the House Republicans said on the floor Saturday evening, you can find it at Thomas. Just enter the date 09/27/2008 and look for Congressional Record pages starting with H10288.
~~~~~
Rep. Gohmert of Texas: "...if the Speaker wants to pass a bill, she sure doesn't need us. And I heard Madam Speaker say just earlier today on the news that it was very unpatriotic for the Republicans not rushing in sooner to be part of this $700 billion bailout discussion. And that was really striking because they didn't ask for our input when they ran in here and crammed down a non-energy energy bill that didn't allow any amendments. They didn't need our votes. They were going to cram it down the Nation's throat and tell them we gave them energy when there was not a drop of energy ever going to come from it. And then shortly thereafter the majority leader said, oh, one of the first orders of business, we'll put the moratorium back. So they don't need us, really, to pass a bill."
~~~~~
Rep. BACHMANN of Minnesota: "...I am despairing over what could be the outcome because I grieve over the fact that we may reject, for the first time in the history of our country, in a wholesale manner, free markets, free answers and free capitalism."

"And what that means is freedom. And there is nothing more important in this country than freedom. It's why a mom would put her 5-year-old in an inner tube in Havana and brave the shark-infested waters for 90 miles to get to Florida so that she could see her son enjoy something she never knew. And that is a concept called ``freedom.''

And what does that have to do with the bailout? It has everything to do with the bailout because what this bailout represents is the wholesale leap downward towards socialism, towards saying that we can never have failure again. Nobody can ever have a bad day. Congress has to jump in and make it right every time, because government has to take up risk and back up everybody's risk."
~~~~~

Anonymous said...

I haven't read a more ludic description of where we are anywhere else.

Anonymous said...

Your red paragraph says it all Joanie. It's over.

Anonymous said...

If the Republicans cave on this bailout, I'm going to register as an independent for the first time in my life.

James said...

To generalize my point, basically 48% of Americans vote Democrat. 48% of Americans vote Republican. At least this is what we are told by our media. These figures have been pretty much the same for the last 45 years but the American people are told that our troubles are the fault of the other party. So as of 2008 only 4% of the American people have figured out that our two party government keeps Americans on a prescribed course to a New World U. N. controlled Socialist order. Globalism where the masses are controlled like sheep. People who owe their existence, life and well being to a government. As mention in previous post, a Fahrenheit 451 society.

Anonymous said...

"The Bill" is out, and up to 106 pages now. The Bill

"To provide authority for the Federal Government to purchase certain types of troubled assets for the purposes of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial system and protecting taxpayers, and for other purposes."

Anonymous said...

Section 128 reduces bank capital requirements to 0% effective this Wednesday.

Anonymous said...

This bill will render worthless, the value of non-federally-backed stocks (not protected in/by the bill).

The bill creates a federally-backed class of stocks, for which risk modelers will be chomping at the bit, to charge fees for calculating what these "new class of" stocks will be worth, now that they are ... what they are ... according to the "sense of the Congress" (a.k.a. the socialist demands by the Congress).

Financial stocks as they were till now, already were questionably (and barely) of some kind of industrious substance, when their issuing companies touted their worth in their investment media-type bloat-speak literature, "products." As if they produced widgets.

We have observed by now, enough to know that these "institutions" are not industrious nor do they have products; instead, they may help actual industry and farming and productivity, but their functions are as staff assistants to actual producers.

Make that greedy staff assistants.

Whenever and wherever the Congress went wrong, by diluting the purpose of a bank offering a worthwhile return on a passbook savings account, spurred the bankers on to find other means for sustaining the basics of gaining depositors.

Similarly for whenever and wherever the Congress damaged (more and more, and to this point in time) the purpose of productive (meaning, industrious) companies issuing stock in order to raise capital, spurred farming and industry to find other means for sustaining the basics of their operations.

The Congress is destroying the purpose of banking and the purpose of issuing stocks (and argue-able of bonds, too).

Now, where are the "conservative" politicians who are alleged in their advertising (political campaigning), to be for such worthy basics of free enterprise?

Helen Thomas will tell you, they are whimps - "just look at them on Wall St. now!" (paraphrasing her latest).

Yet she happily overlooks one major fact:

That limousine liberals run the financial institutions that have been turned by they Congress, into addicts for federal handouts ... because limousine liberals are into that kind of thing.

While most of the conservatives left long ago, and the remainder have faded away from "the world of finance."

Real Men who (and some Real Women) who once stood up for actual capital-ism, as in THE PURPOSE OF CAPITAL which *was* to sustain and help grow enterprises that really were industrious in their work, are mostly gone from Big Business and "corporate America."

Leaving the current mess on Wall St., to be not only the "product" of the liberal Congress office holders, but also their counterparties in Wall St.

The former, now happy to "loan" the latter, $700 plus billion dollars in the largest credit derivative swap (that's "CDS") in our history.

Still betting on prices going up, while ignoring the fact that values are going down.

Almost all of that, because the U.S. Gov't has been engaged since Greenspan, in, as Bill Clinton liked to say, "doing the nation's business."

Which has been, to ENFORCE price increases and thus capital gains and (internal or otherwise executively speaking) returns on investment.

Allegedly, under the blurb that "deflation" and price decreases are bad.

Like "protectionism" is bad.

At every attempt to preserve the basics of investment in industriousness --- that is, in *our industriousness* --- we have been ridiculed by all the above-referenced "experts" that we are a bunch of dummies.

Indeed; my next book:

*$700 Billion Dollar Bailouts for Dummies*

-

First_Salute

Anonymous said...

It looks like Congress will be selling us out. We ought to all paint targets on our backs. It will spare them the need to aim.

Anonymous said...

Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis

Anonymous said...

What an amazing video Cooper! I'm passing it on.

Anonymous said...

Here's another one:

Rep. McCotter Rejects 700-pound Billion Dollar Bag of Dung

Anonymous said...

From another board:

The idiot media is reveling in dollar swaps. Unbelievable. On CNBC they just said there seems to be an excess of US Dollars. This is bad news folks and not good news. The US Treasury doesn't have an untold mountain of foreign currency. They have to buy the currency from the Banks. If the Bank of England asks for pounds sterling, the US has to go buy it. But, with what value? Ah, that's the catastrophe about to raise its head.

Could it be that the real fear is that as the Asians and the Europeans desperately try to escape the US financial crisis they can't convert into their own currency?

Soon the US Treasury will be absolutely flooded with dollars that used to live abroad in bank vaults, safes, safety deposit boxes.

Basis for observation.... the London InterBank Option Rates (LIBOR) versus the US Treasury have reach an all time high. Which translates to zero demand for dollars and max demand for non-dollars.

As I said last week, the flow of capital would be out of financials into Treasuries and the second flow would be out of Treasuries into non-dollars.

FEAR is the watch word beyond the US Financial border now.

Anonymous said...

From a letter to the editor in the Washington Post:

While witnessing, but not participating in, the home real estate frenzy in 2005 and 2006, I kept asking: Who is the idiot buying up all these mortgages issued on inflated home prices to all these people who have neither the capacity nor the intention to repay the loans?

Now I learn it was me.

TED THACKER
Ann Arbor, Mich.

Anonymous said...

Breaking 1:45PM:

House votes NO???? 220 no, 196 aye.

Dow Jones down almost 800 points!!!

joanie said...

The House has done the right thing. Now we just need to hang on for the rollercoaster ride, and hope that cooler heads prevail (maybe those who paid heed to the four hundred economists -- several of whom are Nobel Prize winners -- who warned that this bailout would be beyond disastrous, nationally and globally).

Anonymous said...

Confirmation that there is a God!

226 no, 207 yes. Dow down 450.

joanie said...

Malesherbes:

Thank you for the excellent Henry Adams quote. It's a definitie keeper!

~ joanie

joanie said...

Barry:

Thanks for the kind words.

Our mutual friend dropped by this afernoon and dropped off a DVD entitled 'Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West'.

I can't say that we're 'looking forward to watching it' (that would be masochistic), but I suspect that it is something every American should see. (I also suspect that you have already seen it.)

We'll be watching it some evening this week, and I suspect we'll want to get a copy of our own to pass around.

Continued best to you and the family in these troublig times ...

~ joanie

joanie said...

Marcus:

With a Congress like this, who needs al Qaeda?

Well said! I'd write 'LOL!' but it's hardly a laughing matter.

~ joanie

joanie said...

Thanks, all, for the very kind comments -- and for being among the ever-shrinking minority that understands what is happening to our beloved republic, and why.

joanie said...

To generalize my point, basically 48% of Americans vote Democrat. 48% of Americans vote Republican. At least this is what we are told by our media. These figures have been pretty much the same for the last 45 years but the American people are told that our troubles are the fault of the other party. So as of 2008 only 4% of the American people have figured out that our two party government keeps Americans on a prescribed course to a New World U. N. controlled Socialist order. Globalism where the masses are controlled like sheep. People who owe their existence, life and well being to a government. As mention in previous post, a Fahrenheit 451 society.

James, I agree with every word. But I don't see the 'previous post' to which you refer. Could you have neglected to hit the 'publish' button after previewing it? Please re-simbit it. Thanks!

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

The Hangar Queens

First, the original designers' intention - to build a working and air-worthy aircraft for the purpose of air travel, an easy-to-fly "dream of an aircraft."

They did that; they designed it; they built it; we flew it.

Then, along came the Congress with its not-so-bright ideas, among them:

1) The Congress decided to enhance the business of makers
of lead weights, and "the sense of the Congress," was
to add large pendulous weights to each wing of the aircraft.

2) The Congress, in like manner, decided to enhance the tire
making business by adding several more (than necessary) plies
to the tires.

Thus, the formerly "wonderful plane to fly" was redesigned by the Congress
into being a barely-able-to-fly mass of "the elements which mostly fought
the good training of the pilots, in a contest of wills to see which could
control the aircraft: the Congressional Effect making it difficult to fly,
and the pilots struggling mightily against that "gravitas."

Out of which trials, came demands by the flying public, which caused the
aircraft design business to create, what you could call, a newer design layer of
efforts or "new paradigm" of design business to provide "improved" designs that
would smooth out such rough handling.

They did that; they designed under the "new paradigm;" built refinements;
and we flew it ... though it was no longer a "wonderful plane to fly."

Then, along came the Congress to (yet again) impose its "bright ideas" - meaning
more burdens upon the once-good aircraft design and functions.

Followed by, (yet again) the public's displeasure, followed by *another* "new
paradigm" layer of aircraft design ... and so on it went.

To the point where "leading gov't experts" decried the sudden widespread threat
of a massive failure of the airline business, unless the Secretary of Air Transportation were to be given absolute authority and $700 billion to radically
change (yet again) aircraft design, by supplying "needed liquidity" so that the
aircraft could overnight(!) get a dramatic hangover makeover - a complete tuck
and lift.

As the President and (the liberal media said) "leading members of the Congress"
agreed on the principle points of what the aircraft should look and behave like,
while lecturing the public that "everything is at stake" - translation:

Scaring the flying public nearly to death!

With fears of what is to come, SOON! If, the public does not submit to
unchallenged acceptance of a made-over (several times -over) derivative of
what the aircraft originally had been.

In the frothing sea of information, mis-information, and general panic striking
and panic stricken ... few, if any, politicians and citizens noticed, a lone
Quiet Birdman whose lifeblood had been aircraft design, construction, and
maintenance.

This fellow who had designed the original aircraft that had flown like a dream,
for the original purpose of actually being productive and safely transporting
the flying public, under the care of, and well-trained airmanship of, the pilots
and crew, was almost completely ignored by the mob of the Congress and its
minions and counterparties swarming all over the many revisions of the "hangar queens" occupying attention of the many-worried.

This fellow who understood the basics, knew well, what was needed, and it was not all the grotesque layers of makeovers applied by the Congress followed by
the bulges and forms of added aerodynamic-shapes that tried to make airworthy,
what the Congress had ineptly made un-airworthy.

Instead of a "$700 billion dollar" ultra-makeover, this fellow simply went about
the work of stripping away the layers of all those "new paradigms" and layers
of all those burdens upon the basics that work, until once again, there stood
on the ramp outside in the light of day, and away from all those hangar queens
of the Congress:

The Original Intent

As she was, when she first was tested to be found a wonderful ship to fly.

-

So it is, that the answer we seek, is not a massive government super-fix, but an
honest correction away from a series of mistakes imposed by the Congress, and
instead, getting us back to what works.

Banks, offering interest rates that attract depositors, and thus banks raise capital for investment.

Companies, issuing stocks and paying dividends that attract investors, and thus
companies raise capital for operations and growth.

The problem is the Congress, and the many balls and chains that it attaches to
these fundamentals, in the form of taxes.

We need to eliminate taxes on the first $100,000 of dividend income per
individual.

We need to eliminate taxes on the first $100,000 of interest income from one
passbook savings account - allowed per individual.

The Congress must get out of the way of what works - that is, get out of the
way of the basic methods by which banks and companies raise capital.

The "change" we seek, is that when morning comes, if these tax cuts were in
effect, we would find the roads filled with people returning to their banks
in order to deposit their money in their individual passbook savings accounts,
for the purpose of "getting a decent return on their savings;" and we would
find investors buying stocks in order to take a chance on the growth of
companies while at the same time at least getting some decent return on their
investments in the form of dividends.

Either we force our government to allow this, the practice of attracting
the people, as depositors and investors, or the government will force us
to submit to its being the (by far) biggest source of capital for "our needs"
combined with the government telling us what we can apply the money to, and
to whom, and when, etc.

Either we retain the sovereignty of the people, or The Hangar Queens of
the Congress will dominate the appearance of making things work while
substituting grotesque contraptions designed to bureaucrats' specifications.

I am for returning to the basics and what works, our original intent.


-

First_Salute

Anonymous said...

Joanie, A MUST READ!!!!!!:

Bankruptcy, Not Bailout, is the Right Answer

Anonymous said...

Barack Obama and Goldman Sachs

http://tinyurl.com/3qfvc2

Goldman Sachs functions as a most-favored counterparty for the liberals’ agenda in the Congress, and that article is but one example of how it engineers “derivatives” for the purpose of attracting money that appears on the sidelines (looking for something in which to invest), particularly “derivatives” that have the stamp of approval of the liberal agenda (as in “wink, wink” invest in these, and the Congress will backup/bailout these investments).



First_Salute

Anonymous said...

Rescue some fundamentals instead of "rescuing" the churning of Wall St. accounts

Over at FreeRepublic.com, there is a post that is promoting a reduction of the capital gains tax.

I like the idea, but if I had to choose between that and a reduction of taxes on interest income for passbook savers and a reduction of taxes on dividends, I'll choose these two versus a capital gains tax cut.

Because we should encourage long-term thinking and long-term holding, in the current world of almost entirely short-thinking.

Because we should encourage long-term growth for especially people who are struggling to achieve the American dream. If you mean to help them, that is not by their risking everything (and thru the liberal agenda machinations, too much of other peoples' stakes) by buying and selling the farm (large assets which should "never be sold unless you have to).

Help the little guy (BTW, that includes me) by allowing us to slowly and steadily grow our own estates; to build savings thru interest income (via our passbook savings account) and dividends paid to us by companies whose stock we own (because we can see the value of owning some part of their operations and purpose - their product).

It is in the best interest of the little guy, to buy well and hold wisely.

If that means land, the best, most durable and lasting "gains," are in buying and holding (and paying taxes even) for that day when somebody comes along to whom you can lease the land (if you are not, yourself, working the land).

In the meantime, the policy of reducing taxes on interest income for passbook savings and reducing taxes on dividend income, helps you to save and invest in assets that can (and on the average, do) grow over the long-term --- even if you are a late starter, muttering to yourself, about how you shoulda done this when you were 20-something!

For people who do not have much, the best leg up (financially) is to start putting their money away where it can grow some, for the benefit of themselves and their family (not to mention education, self-education, and training - all to enhance your marketable skills).

Right now, we most need these tax cuts, not only to bail out the banks and businesses who need the capital *from us* in a way that leaves us more directly in control of our money --- by way of our direct relationship with the banks and businesses --- yet more so, for raising the level of our savings and long-term investments.

So we have something to fall back upon, as we take risks.

Which is a prime requirement for any economy, though ridiculed by our government and by Goldman Sachs, both of which want us to either be their slaves and entirely beholden to their success for our well-being, or if we have managed to get to their stratosphere, then be spell-bound within their controls.

Now, if you wish to get rich and risk buying and selling of large amounts of your assets, go for the capital gains tax cut.

Yet, if you wish to actually grow your net worth and have real, earthly wealth, you might say, as the Amish steadily work for, then go for the tax cuts on interest income for passbook savers and tax cuts on dividend income.

Call your Congress Critters and tell 'em what you want.

First_Salute

Anonymous said...

Joan,

This NYT article link reinforces that what is happening today was foreseen. Notice the date.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

I will say that around 2002/2003 Wall Street seemed to have taken over the bad loan making machine, along with companies like Country Wide. Then you have the fancy math learned from 1998 Long Term Capital Management. The off balance sheet entities from Enron. Before you know it everyone was in on it. So one bad decision leads to another.

Anonymous said...

Banks awash in cash:

http://tinyurl.com/436kdb

Yet, they refuse to accept (write down) their losses, and they refuse to make big loans.

So, Paulson (then Bush) demand that something be done about it - as in stimulating loaning.

What's wrong with that? It ignores the fact that gov't is in the way of our being productive, because gov't demands that we make what it says we should, and how we should, and what we should wear to work, and how we should look at each other at work, and who we should associate with at work ... all, in order to be sanctioned as "politically correct" at work.

Now, who wishes to take risks on making more widgets or making some new gizmos, when your challenges are not:

if we make it, will they buy it?

Nope, your challenges are a mountain of political correctness, for an entrepreneur to climb.

You may suppose, that our gov't will, therefore, create federally-funded entrepreneurs who will then take on such "risks" having already been found, politically correct, if only the U.S. Treasury can buy enough souls to participate in getting loaning for socialist failures, going again ... despite the peoples' findings that such ventures are unpalatable, dishonorable, and anti-American.

It's about freedom, even in tough times, even under duress, even when it seems all is lost, and it's a job for the few, the proud, the patriots with the courage to stand up and take on risks in the face of such challenges on the frontier.

It is 1767, some years before our First American Revolution, all over again, facing uncertainty and much in need of friends and family and neighbors and community and our militia and God.

Stand up.


First_Salute

Anonymous said...

First_Salute: Other than the supernumerary carriage returns, your aircraft analogy was brilliant.

It could have been a chapter in Atlas Shrugged.

--John from Starnsville

joanie said...

Angelo,

That’s a good article.

I have been posting over on an investment forum on and off for the past two years or so. I have always had a very cordial relationship with most of the investors I have run into over there. Recently, upon posting a few criticisms of the Bush administration, I have discovered that many ‘conservatives’ resent any criticism of a fellow ‘conservative’, even if he has abandoned conservative principles.

For example, have a good look at this: Mortgages to Illegal Immigrants Come Under Fire.

Excerpt:

...Manuel Lopez came to the U.S. on a tourist visa in 1999 after his bus-driving business in Ecuador failed due to runaway inflation. He stayed here illegally and eventually brought over his wife and son and had another daughter here. He makes about 40-thousand dollars a year working for a downtown Chicago parking garage. Two years ago, he started looking to buy a house but the interest rates his broker quoted him were 8 to 9 percent. Then he heard about a program with much better terms run by Citibank and the non-profit group Acorn Housing.

...He bought the house for 230-thousand dollars with a 30-year fixed rate mortgage set at 6 percent. The program required that he pay three percent down. Lopez is just one of about 900 undocumented immigrants who have gotten mortgages from the Citibank Acorn program nationwide in the past few years. And they’re by no means the only ones in the business....


A nice Horatio Alger story, wouldn't you say? But accomplished by an illegal immigrant, with the help of your and my tax dollars.

And, even worse, from The ACORN Obama Knows:

Under the guise of "consumer advocacy," ACORN has received money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD funds hundreds, if not thousands, of left-wing "anti-poverty" groups across the country led by ACORN. Last October, HUD announced more than $44 million in new housing counseling grants to over 400 state and local efforts. The White House has increased funding for housing counseling by 150 percent since taking office in 2001, despite the role most of these recipients play as activist satellites of the Democratic Party. The AARP scored nearly $400,000 for training; the National Council of La Raza ("The Race") scooped up more than $1.3 million; the National Urban League raked in nearly $1 million; and the ACORN Housing Corporation received more than $1.6 million.

As the Consumer Rights League points out in its new expose, the ACORN Housing Corporation has worked to obtain mortgages for illegal aliens in partnership with Citibank. It relies on undocumented income, "under the table" money, which may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Moreover, the group's "financial justice" operations attack lenders for "exotic" loans, while recommending 10-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and risky reverse mortgages. Whistleblower documents reveal internal discussions among the group that blur the lines between its tax-exempt housing work and its aggressive electioneering activities. The group appears to shake down corporate interests with relentless PR attacks, and then enters "no lobby" agreements with targeted corporations after receiving payment.


I no longer trust the White House, under this ‘Republican’ president, any more than I do the democrat congress.

~ joanie

joanie said...

First_Salute,

Your 'The Hangar Queens' is something that I wish Rush would read on his program. His audience would eat it up.

Sometimes when one transforms an overwhelming set of circumstances into a phsycial analogy that can be easily imagined -- even 'felt' -- it is made doubly powerful.

I found myself slouching down in my chair, reading your description of the 'alterations' made on the airplane.

I believe that I understand this economic crises better than the average American (as I know you do as well), and yet I 'felt' it for the first time, upon reading your creation.

Thank you for sharing your gift here!

~ joanie

joanie said...

First_Salute said:

Rescue some fundamentals instead of "rescuing" the churning of Wall St. accounts.


THAT IS THE BOTTOM LINE IN ALL OF THIS!

I heard a news report this morning that Americans are now somewhat less angry about congress passing an eventual bailout. I would assume that the 777 point drop in the Dow yesterday caused some of our countrymen to become very unsettled (even moreso than most of us have been over the past couple of weeks). But the numbers on Wall Street yeserday should not cause us to cast aside our determination to not allow ‘government’ to ‘fix’ this crisis.

It was, after all, government that got us into this mess in the first palce.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac themselves were government charters, within whose charters is an assurance that the debts the two mortage companies incurred are backed by the good faith and credit (*cough*) of the United States government.

What’s not to like?

‘What’s not to like’ is that that very same U.S. Government pressured both Fannie and Freddie, and lenders at large, to begin issuing very shaky mortgage contracts. Government-backing was now turning into a high-risk-enabler/enforcer rather than a security guaranteer. And the underwriting standards of major mortgage institutions became so lax as to be laughable, to anyone with a real knowledge of unerdwriting.

Now that housing prices have fallen, and the economy has enetered a recessionary period, mortgage defaults have soared, and ‘government backed’ has assumed monumental meaning.

Of course, the bottom line in all of this is the little-contemplated fact that, in financial issues, ‘government-backed’ really means ‘taxpayer-backed’.

That’s where you and I come in.

We didn’t pressure mortgage companies to make these bad loans. Nor did we relax the standards that allowed, even demanded, that they do so.

We were too busy -- making a living, putting food on our table, and putting a little of the fruits of our labor into savings -- to notice what was going on behind closed doors (at least for those of us who do not do daily extensive research about what goes on in D.C.) in Washington.

And now our government wants us to use those ‘fuits of our labor’ (and the portion of those fruits that we have been saving for many years) to correct the problem that they caused. Not only that, they want us to feel good about the fact that they want to institute a broad new set of government powers aimed at ‘regulating’ the banking industry (and others, no doubt, in the future).

Call me a conspriacy theorist if you like, but it seems to me that any kindergartener, asked to step away from his building blocks for a second, and asked the question, ‘If your friend’s Dad gets your friend into a lot of bad trouble, trouble that will hurt your friend for a long time, should your friend go home and ask his Dad for more and more advice? And should he be required to follow that advice all the time?’

That little child will look at you in five-year-old disbelief.

Instead of allowing government more regulatory power over private industry (something forbidden by the Constitution to begin with), it’s time to allow institutions to fail. Allow private creditors, or whoever picks up the reins, to rebuild the company. Granted, shareholders (you and I) will be hit hard, but, if re-structured by the right management, the business will survive and grow. And any risk involved in the transaction will be assumed by private industry, not the American taxpayer. In the process, a little of the thick dust that has been accumulating on the U.S. Constitution will be brushed aside.

Granted, the nation as a whole, will be affected to one degree or another. But the eventual result, once the dust settles, will be that the capitalist system will have reinvigorated itself, without the imposition of the heavy hand of socialism – a heavy hand which always insists on permanence, and the maintanence of a stronger and stronger grip, over time.

Demanding that taxpayers bail out those who caused, and those who profitted from, this crisis – and condoning even more government oversight intrusion into the private sector – simply amounts to agreeing to allow socialist doctrine to become socialist practice.

Implicit in any bailout proposal will also be small-print ‘gifts’ to friends of congress. Although a minor consideration in this process, that is perhaps the most maddening one. No bill introduced in the U.S. congress gets passed without a ‘you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours’ provision.

Even in these most troubling times, in which the American taxpayer is being asked to mortgage his future to pay down debt, such provisions will abound.

Instead of a bailout, it’s time to allow nature to take its course, bite the bullet, roll with the waves, and then, once the dust settles, demand that government interference in private industry be outlawed (or rather, that the laws already on the books be respected), that those who may have played a crinimal role in this crises be identified and prosecuted, and that the Community Reinvestment Act be revisited, in the light of the role it played in the hands of ‘leaders’ who chose to use it as a weapon against the mortgage industry, and eventually against every hard-working, taxpaying American citizen.

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

Prediction: A "bailout" plan will be passed by the House by the end of the week, and it will be no better than the one that was just voted down.

Anonymous said...

I read this on another board:

Our Congress has a big problem on their hands and they had better get it right. They had better do more than just put their fingers in the dike to plug the leaks, although that is better than wasting their time pointing them at each other. It is time for our politicians, who love playing politics and running for office more than they love doing their jobs of running the country, to do as they were elected to do. It’s time they put partisan politics aside and put the country’s business ahead of their own self interests.

America’s freedom didn’t come cheap! The price of abusing that freedom, as many people did, should be high enough to change America’s course for the future.

Anonymous said...

It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning....Henry Ford

Anonymous said...

Here's another one:

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, inder the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy....Thomas Jefferson

Somebody ought to get up on the Senate floor and filibuster today by reading that over and over and over again.

Anonymous said...

Joanie,

In general, the GUBMINT has artificially held high and boosted as it could, the price of real estate, and over time, higher and higher above the value of real estate.

Now, as a consequence of the decline in the value of real estate (for whatever reasons the value has declined), the GUBMINT insists (AGAIN) that "we cannot have deflation" and we "cannot have the prices of homes in decline."

Because, the GUBMINT knows well, that it has corrupted the fundamentals of banking and our stock market, leaving people to choose the last thing they should, as their savings: "the farm."

Significantly, the GUBMINT used high taxes on dividends and lower tax rates on "capital gains" to compell more and more people to "sell the farm" to the point, that people (while prices were going up - but ignoring value) were stimulated (read the banks' ads in California, such as from 3 years ago) to "flip" their homes.

Instead of protecting our homes ("the farm"), we were encouraged by "THE EXPERTS" (very, very well-paid "experts") to flip homes for capital gains and thus increase our net worth ... which worked only as long as prices were going up and values were ignored.

With every stumble, Greenspan printed money to keep that game going.

At first, Federal Reserve interest rate adjustments succeeded; but over time, the deviation between the higher and higher prices, and the trajectory of the value of things, became bigger and BIGGER.

Whenever somebody suggested that we let the market adjust, they were ridiculed by our "leaders" who vigorously claimed that "deflation" is bad!

Well, it could be hard times, if the GUBMINT has so abused the fundamentals of free enterprise, that the only savings you have left is "the farm."

Indeed, *then,* deflation means that you are forced to work with less capital and fewer tools and slim pickings among your belongings and scarce comforts of home.

Yet, if we had been permitted by the GUBMINT to save as we once did, we would have actual savings and investments to fall back upon, without having to sell "the farm."

The basics of this, are resounding across the land, where every day for the last couple weeks, people have been trying to buy up hard assets that are *not* "the farm," but have some value and are also *not cash.* So that, they have something to sell in the coming hard times, *other than "the farm!"*

The Congress, wishing to make hay in the politics of "the crisis," is ignoring the fact that most Americans (legal citizens who work for a living, don't break the law, etc., and carry the load of all the socialist largesse on our backs - and are loathed by the left-wing-nuts for doing the jobs that liberals will not do ...) are already getting themselves accustomed to the actual water level - meaning, where values and prices meet - well below the PRICE FIXING -set of prices on assets that the GUBMINT has tried to set.

The GUBMINT's proposal to charge American workers, the cost of present taxes plus all future taxes, and charge us *now(!)* in order to take our money and use it to chase the GUBMINT's newly acquired assets, on the GUBMINT's (Paulson/Bush) theory that e-v-e-n-t-u-a-l-l-y, somewhere in the future, *our* future wages will miraculously be enough to have f-i-n-a-l-l-y boosted value up to meet the GUBMINT set prices of assets, *AND* our future wages still have enough adjusted income in them to be taxed at that future date where GUBMINT-set prices and value finally meet ... phew! ... is what is ridiculous.

Paulson/Bush propose to "reach out" into our future and find the money to PRESENTLY chase assets and thus keep up - up - up ... prices of assets that it wants to [capital gains] tax.

My humble opinion is, that game is over. No sense in spending the money we do not now have plus the money we are projected to have, on a theory that we will at some future moment, be able to justify the price of "the farm" - yet, having exhausted ourselves getting there.

In a nutshell, the GUBMINT wants to freeze the price of homes, which would be as fated as trying to freeze the price of the stock market.

To pay for that, the GUBMINT wants to embark on a scheme, "borrowing" (we're led to believe) from Americans who actually pay taxes.

The GUBMINT claims that with *our future income* we can support such prices and still have money left over to pay future taxes and the cost of living and be able to save and invest.

The whole GAMBIT relies upon some spectacularly rosy future picture of incredible growth in the *value* of assets and the phenomenal growth of jobs with "wages that can't be beat!"

Can we really freeze the DJIA where it's at, then go about our work, while laboring mightily to keep the DJIA levitating ... on some hope raving success stories and leaps of real wages, such that value finds its way back to these levels and then floats the DJIA once again?

Maybe, but the chances are so small, that the "experts'" plan seems to be one of huge, care-less egos.

Everywhere we are expected that Supply and Demand will be respected for what they do: causing the rise *and* fall of prices ... except(!) where the GUBMINT wishes to engage in price fixing of large assets - that just so happen to be critical to *our* well-being.

It's a racket being promoted by people who want to buy and sell big assets and make big money. They want low capital gains taxes, accordingly, and they can justify that, as long as the prices are flat or going up ... despite actual values.

Ironic, that, because the liberals always claim that cuts on dividend taxes "help the rich." When in fact, it is low capital gains taxes *in combination with high dividend taxes plus taxes on interest income from banks* that help the rich.

Such taxes - as we have seen - compell people to not save as they should in non-"farm" assets, and instead, the people gamble on the chance of large, fast gains by "flipping homes."

That makes "the man on the street" / "the little guy" a patsy for the high stakes real estate gamers. When *that* game goes bad, "the man on the street" is at the mercy of rich real estate (usually limousine liberals, by the way) - having "lost the farm," the little guy finds himself having to rent some "sustainable" space on property owned by "the rich."

To wit: your home ("the farm") should not be your savings plan.

Passbook savings, and investments in stocks and bonds, should be your savings plan, plus other non-cash assets, such as some portion of your net worth as gold and silver, but more importantly, other land and other assets - such as your participating as a silent partner in some worthy free enterprise, and perhaps some steady rental income, and maybe even some royalties on some bright ideat that you've had.

*These* are the fundamentals of growing and having earthy wealth, versus reck-less-ly grasping for large capital gains without consideration for your basic well-being.

People who the GUBMINT reduces to only being able to get by with a GUBMINT paycheck "week to week" and/or only being able to get by on the proceeds from their selling "the farm," are "the poor" who "get poorer as the rich get richer" ... by acts of the Congress that claims its tax laws redistribute the benefits and burdens of society, otherwise.

While I would like to see, always, a capital gains tax cut, it must come *after* a significant cut on dividend taxes and on interest income taxes, so that those of us who start life with less, or who passing the later stages with less, have savings upon which to fall back *and they are not in the form of being our homes, "the farm."

First_Salute

Anonymous said...

...watching (and recording) C-SPAN now in hopes of capturing the bailout vote this evening, and have had to take several antacids to forestall uncontrolled projectile vomiting.

The Democrats have padded this bill up to 400-600 pages, and are stuffing it with all kinds of pork.

In the last thirty minutes, I've had to suffer Barbara Boxer inserting "universal mental health coverage" into the bill, and some other bozo inserting a "railroad safety" section.

Anonymous said...

My mistake: The senate was voting on an Amtrak bill. Disregard previous comment. Financial bailout bill coming up.

joanie said...

The Senate has just passed the March to Socialism Bill, and the House will follow suit later in the week.

For decades the American people have been electing leadership that is doing exactly what we want them to do -- keeping our minds off of anything that makes us have to think, and providing the minimum necessary for the majority to live without too much worry.

The majority of the citizenry was up in arms regarding a possible 'Wall Street bailout' ... until Monday, when they saw the results of the House vote reflected in the Dow. Now, because they 'want to live without too much worry', they are slowly changing their minds.

'Never mind what any future proposed bailout entails. Just see to it that my retirement savings don't ever again go through what they did on Monday!'

If that isn't the battle cry of a conglomeration of ill-informed fools, unwilling to look past their noses, I don't know what is.

Our Founders, and our children, deserved better.

Turn out the lights on your way out. It's over.

~ joanie

joanie said...

First_Salute said:

Everywhere we are expected that Supply and Demand will be respected for what they do: causing the rise *and* fall of prices ... except(!) where the GUBMINT wishes to engage in price fixing of large assets - that just so happen to be critical to *our* well-being.


Very well said, F_S!

Passbook savings, and investments in stocks and bonds, should be your savings plan, plus other non-cash assets, such as some portion of your net worth as gold and silver, but more importantly, other land and other assets - such as your participating as a silent partner in some worthy free enterprise, and perhaps some steady rental income, and maybe even some royalties on some bright idea that you've had.

I would agree but for the fact that government has inserted itself into several of those ‘savings plans’ as well.

Our monetary policy wonks have so badly crippled the dollar (well on its way to eventual worthlessness) that ‘passbook savings’ are only as long-term valuable as the value of (backed by nothing) paper money.

Stocks are so badly and so readily manipulated by the big-money powers that be, while the SEC is so often busy looking the other way, that a small investor can often get burned simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time (for instance, long in a stock that the ‘big money’ people believe needs to be shorted, for whatever their fancy deems an appropriate reason). Naked shorting has become a popular hobby, whereby such criminals can affect the movement of a stock sometimes by even shorting a number of total shares that is in excesses of the total shares in existence. The playing field is so un-level anymore that the only way to be confident of doing well is to make sure that you are on the same side as ‘the players’. The quality of the company behind the stock matters less than what ‘the players’ decide the stock should be doing at any given time.

The free enterprise/rental income used to be a wonderful way for an entrepreneur to make his way, but even those noble pursuits have been sullied by government intervention.

An acquaintance of mine owned a bird shop in rural Lancaster County a few years ago. She sold wonderful exotic birds, and kept the shop well-stocked, neat as a pin, and uniquely enchanting – with limbs of trees native to the birds’ native habitats serving as the perches in their cages, etc.

I bought two beautiful canaries from her about twenty years ago, and returned to buy another a year or two later, only to find that she had gone out of business. It turns out that her business was thriving so much that she had to hire a part-time helper. But the bureaucratic requirements that that decision caused her to have to meet (changes in insurance, workman’s comp, and a myriad of other regulations and red tape) eventually made her profitability fall to the point where what was once a labor of love became a burden that she was no longer willing to bear.

One cannot even buy the home/land of one’s dreams anymore without having to extrapolate the possible increase in real estate taxes (local taxes admittedly, but government intrusion nonetheless) over the lifetime of the home, in order to determine whether it will be possible to stay there forever. We no longer ‘own’ our homes. We simply ‘rent’ them from the tax assessor. And, if the ‘rent’ gets too exorbitant (on that which we saved a lifetime to purchase), we simply have to lower our sights and move into something more modest that the government will ‘allow’ us to afford.

I don’t mean to nit-pick your excellent commentary (and excellent it is!) – simply to make a point about just one of your observations, because it is the actions on the part of the government in regard to our saving that chokes me up every time I contemplate it.

Thanks for the wonderful contribution!

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

Joanie,

It would not occur to me, that you were "nit-picking."

I think that your list of GUBMINT's intrusions and burdens, are on target.

It is unfortunate, that so many "Democrats" would agree, but "think" that the Democrat Party knows and cares about these things.

These folks are so full of dislike for the Republican Party, on the basis of all the hype put out there by the liberals and liberal media and *at university* - "thinking" that the Republican Party *is* the party of Wall St. banker-fat-cats ... such folks completely overlook that most Republicans and conservatives are not so.

Of the well-to-do, whom I know, only about 1/3rd are conservative and Republican. The rest are liberals, and most of them are so, because they fear what *not being a liberal* will do to their financial condition, such is their fear of Democrat Party agitators who "do" the nation's businesses as in "or else!"

Example, in Dayton, OH, you cannot get a delivery via the Teamsters, without a $3,000 donation to the local Democrat Party HQ (in which, there is an enormous portrait of FDR).

I hasten to add, that most union folks are squared away workers; but they mostly at the mercy of "THE PARTY" because of threats.

There are enough elements of the left-wing-nuts' thought police state and "labor's" thought-less police statists running around, not to mention all the federally-funded at-university (hence federally-backed) "protestors" who show up for various liberal media productions, on time and on que ... to scare most people into "maintaining a neutral, 'bi-partisan' position on 'the issues.'"

Well, as I believed it true in the 1970's, I still do - that too many people do not get enough of well-written conservative thinking *that is reasonably easy on the eyes.* Such that, they have verifiable details otherwise kept from them/us by the "liberal media" who are inclined to block from our minds, what we are "too dumb to understand."

There you have it, as the Socialist Senate stated this evening, it is our betters, and we "just don't understand."

Again, you are right, yet I am not quite as jarred as some here, because I know something that our Congress has forgotten:

Our Constitution is a peace treaty.

The principles and standards, the craftsmanship, that went into forging it, are an eternal achievement that cannot be erased, and they will come back some day to make "clear" to all who tread on the worthy accomplishments of our ancestors.

That, by the way, is the basis for why I tell people, I do not care what your race is, because the importance of the previous two paragraphs, the achievements, you are doomed, if you resist, yet blessed if when you realize them, as either you or your progeny will, one day, discover that you too, are a freedom fighter for the rule of law that limits government and government agents, such that they must adhere to their departments and offices and enumerated powers thereof.

You cannot beat such liberty; you can only suppress it at your peril.

History, will indeed repeat itself.

First_Salute

Anonymous said...

Speaking of "at university," there is this article of college student funds' angst, in the *Wall St. Journal* this early October morning:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122290590988096397.html

Gasp! Ouch! No money?!

Hardly.

Don't you think, that we should borrow from the Democrats', their "it's only fair," equity rule, and thereby assert in the public eye, that the Harvard Endowment (worth $38 bil, last I checked), which supports so many pampered children, "must do its patriotic duty" (borrowing from, though not plagarizing, Joe Biden) and RESCUE THE $9.3 bil fund MENTIONED IN THE *WSJ* article?!!

First_Salute

joanie said...

Let’s boil this ‘new and improved’ bailout bill that just passed the Senate down to its bare bones. Then, if you’re moved to do so, it might just be time to pick up the phone and call your congressman, urging him to really ‘stand up for the American taxpayer’ (not to mention do what is right).

Admittedly, the do what is right aspect of this whole thing would represent a complete aberration where any decision-making in Washington is concerned, but you may just sleep better tonight, having at least engaged in a personal effort to revive that archaic concept.

The bill that was voted down on the floor of the House on Monday is essentially the same bill that was passed on the floor of the Senate last night, with one glaring exception: the addition of a myriad of ‘you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours’ pig-product codicils.

Translation:

Monday’s bill: A $700 billion bailout for the congressional/special interest/Wall Street criminals who brought about this economic meltdown to begin with, with the $700 billion needed to ‘keep the economy chugging’ to be paid by the American taxpayer.

Today’s bill: A $700 billion bailout for the congressional/special interest/Wall Street criminals who brought about this economic meltdown to begin with, with the $700 billion needed to ‘keeping the economy chugging’ to be paid by the American taxpayer ... with the added stipulation that a huge number of businesses/organizations, with direct ties to congressmen whose votes are needed in order to pass the bill, will be granted enormous tax breaks.

Result: The fair share of taxes that would normally be paid by ‘friends of Congress’ will now also be shifted onto the shoulders of the American taxpayer ...

... as if the American taxpayers’ portion of that gargantuan burden weren’t heavy enough already.

The self-serving corruption in Washington is so thick as to be impenetrable anymore.

The concept of ‘public service’? Capitalism and the free market system in America?

Turn out the lights on your way out. It’s over.

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

My take on the bailout bill:

I think dems took advantage of this mess - the timing of the “crisis” was suspect to say the least. The financial problems have been building for a long time and easily could have been triggered a month ago, or 6 months ago. Paulson’s trip to Bush to get Bush to scream “fire” in a crowded theater pulled that trigger now. (not to mix metaphores or anything...) I suspect that if Obama wins, Paulson will be brought into his administration.

Paulson’s smart enough to know what’s going on - and he’s smart enough to know the effect this would have on the election. He also could have alerted Bush to this a year ago. It’s that old a situation.

I live in Florida - one of the places where toxic loans were made with abandon. Most of us here knew something bad was happening. People were being put into homes with “interest only” loans who would not be able to make payments past the first few months. It was a set up. But when you keep seeing the same pattern, there’s an incentive behind it. And that’s where Obama, Frannie and Freddie and congressional banking regulations come into play.

In short, like you - this does not have the feel of being an accident.

If the bailout is passed, it will benefit the people and agencies who got us into this mess. The only way it would work is if they are lying to us about the severity of the “crisis” I think that’s a possibility. If that’s NOT one of their lies, the bailout will postpone the problem. Postpone it to a time when we will have less money to do a real “bailout”.

Dem regulation insistence on making banks loans to people who never had a chance of making the payments was close to evil, but very effective in bringing down the financial system. Some people at the top understood the consequences of these choices. We’ll probably never know who they were...

joanie said...

Bob Masterson:

So sorry I missed your link to that excellent article the first time I ran down this thread!

It's powerful! And I have it saved for future reference.

Best to you and yours, dear friend ...

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

To Chairman Cox- SEC

Dear Sir:

It is hard to understand how low you can go to disgrace yourself and the Administration regarding
the destruction of the stock market and the lives of so many people who have trusted you.

The latest travesty of allowing the hedge funds to usurp your latest decree to report their
"short" holdings (which is not any different than those who report their "long" holdings) because
by doing so the hedge funds complicit in destroying the value of so many companies' stocks
might be known, is a disgrace.

Further, the fact that you will not stop the "naked shorting" and the "fails to deliver"
for all companies (and not just a few) is further evidence of the corruption that you and the
administration have shown regarding the destruction of the markets and the economy.

When this decree becomes more evident, I hope there is an investigation, which
mercifully will be soon. It is to be hoped that you and your associates in this
criminal enterprise of destroying the U.S. market and the economy will be brought
to justice and that you and the others complicit in this corruption will rot in jail for a long time.

You sir, are a disgrace to this country and to everything this country has ever stood for
as a place of equal opportunity for all. You have ruined the lives of millions of people.

Yours truly,

Anonymous said...

Sarah may have turned the tide, at least for now!

Anonymous said...

Senator Obama today announced a plan to seize oil company profits and distribute them to "working class" families.

Sound like a viable energy policy to you? Or Marxist redistributionism?

Anonymous said...

On this sad night, I can only add: Bailout bill loops in green tech, IRS snooping. Read it and weep for America.

Anonymous said...

In 6 months time, where will the cash come from when the idiots on Wall Street burn through this illegitimate working capital by tossing it back and forth between themselves and paying themselves fat commissions?

The velocity of the money that IS in the system NOW before this bailout hits has dropped precipitously as well. This means that after each transaction, the money goes into the bank and stays there. It doesn't get recirculated onto Main Street. It means that it will take about 5 times as much cash injected into the system by the FED to provide the necessary cash for all of the folks screaming for cash. Just ask your local car dealer how many cars he's sold this past month. It won't even cover his secretary's salary.

And the problem with that solution? When the world finally starts to move forward, what happens when we have 150x as much cash in the system? Prices WILL ZOOM upward. No, not the stock market prices. Retail prices. Yeah, everyone will have a party for a week and then look out.

You and your loved ones will be paying $10 for a gallon of milk and $10 for a gallon a gas. A loaf of bread will cost $15/ And all the bright economists under our Wunderkind Bernanke will scream for wage and price controls and we'll get a Soviet-style economy that only produces shortages and bread lines.

Anonymous said...

From Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Bailout Bill Passed, So What Happens Now?
~~~~~
"Bernanke and Paulson think that the Fed buying toxic garbage will spur institutions to start lending. It won't. Banks will still be holding more garbage than the Fed can possibly buy. The market will be able to smell that garbage, even if the rules allow banks to pretend that garbage is a rose."

"Banks have no reason to lend in a world of overcapacity, rising unemployment, and increasingly sour consumer attitudes. It was disingenuous at best to suggest this would free up lending for main street as it was packaged."

Anonymous said...

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=1b19d372-eff6-4f8a-86ef-24ffe3463f69

Mgrdechian: When you look closely at all the things leftists do and say, you can’t help but notice that they almost always have one very obvious thing in common -- a need to bring others down. A need to undermine, a need to obstruct, a need to get in the way and a need to make themselves feel good by doing and saying superficial things that make no sense on any logical, practical or rational level.

Unfortunately, one of the best ways for them to deflect criticism or justify these sorts of behaviors is to hide behind some sort of guise. Disguise their attack against one group as an effort to help another. Disguise their hatred as outrage. Disguise their failure as oppression. Disguise their real agenda in any way they possibly can in order to make the viciousness of it seem as though it was actually meant to be benign.

But the reality is that these people are so consumed by their own hatred that they’ll sacrifice anything, anybody, any culture and even the survival of our own country to destroy the people they need to attack. Just look at the viciousness of the attacks against President Bush. We have an entire army of incredibly well financed, well trained and completely fanatical terrorists intent on destroying our way of life. But what do Leftists do anytime Bush tries to anything about the problem? They relentlessly attack him in every vile way they possibly can. These people are so obsessed by their need to destroy others, that they can’t even see straight long enough to save their own lives.

FP: Why do you think the leftist faith is ultimately self-destructive?

Mgrdechian: I think the answer can be summed up in two words -- Bad Competition, a concept I discuss in considerable detail in the second chapter of the book.

In that discussion, I offer the following proposition: There are in fact, two and only two types of competition -- good and bad. Good Competition is ultimately productive to the competing elements, while Bad Competition is ultimately destructive.

After describing what I mean by this and giving a few examples, I then provide some definitions. As such, I define Good Competition as: Any competitive effort where a person or organization attempts to achieve success based solely on the strength of their abilities, products or services. Similarly, I define Bad Competition as: Any competitive effort where a person or organization attempts to achieve success through any means other than the strength of their abilities, products or services. Rather than working to improve these elements, those engaged in Bad Competition will typically seek to achieve success primarily through the impairment of others.

Now look at things like affirmative action, quotas, empowerment, increasing taxes, thought-crimes or any sort of preferential treatment or special protections for women, minorities, homosexuals or others. How do these supposedly begin liberal programs help people? Simple -- by hurting others. There is no improvement on an absolute level, there is only improvement on relative level by taking from others, lowering standards, denying opportunities to more qualified people or rewarding people for achievements they never managed to achieve. Clearly this sort of thing can never help a society as a whole; it can only hurt it. Worse yet, over time, this dynamic of penalizing success and rewarding failure can only lead to one thing -- the complete collapse of a society.

This simple rule explains exactly why Hillary Clinton cannot ever be allowed to be President -- absolutely everything about her is based solely on the relentless exploitation of Bad Competition. And Bad Competition will -- without a doubt -- be the death of this country.

FP: What is the best way to fight the Left?

Mgrdechian: I think there are two ways to look at that question. The first would be how to fight the Left on an intellectual level, and I think the answer to that part of the question is fairly straightforward: the best way to fight the Left on an intellectual level is through logic, rational arguments and a thorough understanding of exactly what their strategies are.

Unfortunately, debate and logic don’t win street fights and the second way to look at the question is on a practical level -- in other words, what is the best way to fight the Left in order to prevent their ideas and policies from permeating more and more elements of our society? Now that’s a tough one. It’s tough because in a way, liberalism is to politics what fast food is to nutrition -- a quick fix and an easy escape from responsibility. So how do you get people off of that quick fix? The only way that ever seems to work is to force them to go through a complete withdrawal; to go cold turkey.

In other words, don’t compromise. In general, liberalism advances not through sudden shifts in policy, but slowly. Incrementally. A little bit at a time. And the best way to stop this advance is for conservatives to be more proactive in standing up for what they believe in. I admit, it certainly isn’t easy to do -- especially when you know you’ll be relentlessly attacked just for trying to be objective, but it is something that has to be done. If not, I have no doubt that one day we’ll all wake up, stare blankly out our windows and quietly wonder what ever happened to the country we grew up in.

FP: Richard Mgrdechian, thank you for joining us.
.

Anonymous said...

Good post tod.

Ayn Rand called it "Hatred of the good for being the good." It takes a while to get your mind around the fact that the left wants to tear down anything good and replace it with...nothing. She also said their motivation was hatred of life itself. I've come to believe that.

Rand also said the way to fight them was on moral grounds.

Anonymous said...

Biden's biggest "mis-statemets" (read LIES) on Thursday night, all of which, if done by Palin, would be all over the MSM:

1. Hesbollah didn't get put out of Lebanon. It was Syria.

2. Hesbollah didn't win an election in the "Palestinian State". It was Hamas.

3. Biden's big U.N. initiative to keep Hezbollah out of the Lebanese government was bogus since they were already in.

4. Pakistan's nukes can't even reach Israel.

5. The Vice-President's constitutional duties do indeed include more than Senate tiebreaks.

Where's the media?

Anonymous said...

How do you tell a communist? It's someone who reads Marx and Lenin.

How do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

--Ronald Reagan

Anonymous said...

The End of an Era
~~~~~
"But what makes this particular economic crisis so appalling, at least from this vantage point, is the sheer scumminess, corruption, short-sightedness and general incompetence of everyone involved. At least in the business world, especially in the take-no-prisoners world of high-tech that kind of venality and ineptitude either gets you fired or kills the company; by comparison, in Washington, it puts you in charge of the recovery effort."

Anonymous said...

If today's market action is any indication, the world ain't buyin' the "bailout."

David Veksler said...

It’s ignorant to blame "special interests" for America’s problems.

In a populist democracy such as we have now, every group that participates in the political system is a “special interest”, with the incentive and the possibility of using the political system to extract benefits for its members at the expense of other groups. The welfare and regulatory systems are two common means of coercively redistributing property and conferring monopoly benefits to various groups. Everyone in a democracy is constantly on the defensive against the possibility of organized groups extracting benefits from him, and on the offensive attempting to use the coercive power of the state to extract benefits from others.

The existence of special interests is just a symptom of the disease: the growth of government power to a degree that allows those in power to violate our rights and steal our property for the benefits of their constituents. Populist “maverick” politicians who claim that they will “fight special interests” and “change the culture in Washington” are just attempting to subvert the power of the state to favor their particular constituency. Take away the power of the government, and you will remove both the incentive and the power of the “special interests.”

joanie said...

heroiclife:

First of all, just a little personal advice (take it or leave it): When attempting to make a point with someone who has stated 'A', you will rarely win him over to your point of view by starting out your argument with, 'It's ignorant to believe A'.

'I'd like to take issue with your argument A' might render the other person a bit more receptive to your point of view.

With semantics aside ...

I suppose I may agree with you that we now live in a populist democracy (and we both know that our Founders repeatedly warned us about the dangers inherent in a democracy).

And, while I also agree with you that every group that participates in the political system is a special interest, in concept, I vehemently disagree that every one of those special interest groups seeks to use the system to extract benefits for its members at the expense of others.

Would you say that those who are pressing for drilling in ANWR are doing so in order to receive benefit at the expense of others? If you are as level-headed and well educated as I suspect you are on the supposed 'environmental concerns' inherent in the debate, I hope your answer is no. Despite the fact that they are growing more difficult to find, there still exist arguments whose basis is genuinely the common good.

I agree that the existence of special interest is 'just a symptom of the disease', if you are defining 'the disease' as our devolution from a representative republic to a populist democracy, and the coincidental increase in the power of the state.

But the power of special interests is (literally) exponentially larger and more well organized on the left than it is on the right, simply by the nature of the beast. Thus my negative reference to special interests in this piece.

If you will read this piece a bit more carefully, you will see that I did not ‘blame special interests for America’s problems’. I spread the blame over a very wide area, of which ‘special interests’ was a small segment, and in which ‘special interests’ use the main cause of our problems (namely the corruption inherent in the government – especially, but not exclusively, Congress) to their advantage.