1) Their hearts run cold. They don't give to charity despite their oh so caring psychological problems.
2) They elected a perfectly unqualified President because he had better foreign policy judgement than Hillary. Then, that President appointed Hillary as his Secretary of Foreign Policy.
3) They were against the war in Iraq before it started, sheepishly for it when Bush announced,"mission accomplished", then against it when we were losing it - even to the unbelievable point of withdrawing from it and turning the world's oil supply over to Al Qeida, and now that we are winning it, they don't care about it despite having elected a President because of it?
4) They created a huge world wide financial crisis, with their psycho caring for the poor, that extended loans to the poor for homes they could not pay for.
5) With their unions, they have driven 30 million badly needed jobs overseas.
6) With their immigration policy, they have taken 20 million more jobs from Americans.
7) They claim to be like real Americans when they don't believe in freedom or liberty from gov't at all, but rather in gov't welfare and manipulation of all kinds.
8) They are essentially violent monopolists who want to force higher and higher taxes on all Americans so money earned voluntarily will be taken away violently and spent the way they imagine it should be spent.
9) They lack the IQ to understand that money taxed and spent locally will be spent far more efficiently than money taxed and spent by federal Democrat monopolists in Washington.
10) They lack the IQ to understand that welfare, in all its Democratic forms, will create the need, more often than not, for more welfare, not less, and so continue to reduce the ability, well-being, and self-respect of each recipient more and more until our country's psychological health and productivity is, in the end, Cuban.
11) They lack the IQ to look at China to see that Republican capitalism has instantly ended centuries of slow starvation for billions and billions of human beings.
12) They worship Europe even when it can't defend itself, has a second rate standard of living despite copying most of its new products from America, and refuses to fight in what Democrats call the real war in Afghanistan, which Obama wants to escalate. But mostly they love Europe because its primarily military weapon is nothing less than, heart-felt negotiation, which, over 5 years, Iran found very helpful with its nuclear bomb project that now threatens to destabilize the entire world.
13) They hate America because they lack the IQ to understand it.
14) Their schools are among the worst in the industrialized world because Democratic unions won't 1) compel attendance, 2) concentrate on the 3R's, 3) fired bad teachers, and 4) base pay on merit or vouchers.
15) They have increased the crime rate 5 times by promoting an entitlement, victimhood mentality among the poor and within the criminal justice system.
16) They have diminished love and the American family with their encouragement of abortion, birth control , divorce, and gay rights.
17) They have bankrupted the American gov't with their always expanding tax and spend policy that serves no purpose except to buy votes and diminish most of those on whom the money is spent.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
201 wed
10.01.2008
How the Democrats Caused The Credit Crisis
Quite simply, the current credit crisis was caused by Democratic interference with the free market. In fact, Democrats hate the free market out of an interest, among others, in buying votes from those who don't profit as much or as easily as they'd like to from it. Accordingly, The Federal Reserve, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, The Community Reinvestment Act, and FHA, among many others, all exist to interfere in a huge way with the free market in order to make home buying easier for those whom the free market deems unqualified because of their actuarial inability to pay back their home loans.
The solution to this problem is simply to eliminate or shrink Democratic interference with the free market, in which case the current crisis would have been rendered impossible by a self-correcting free market. Republicans believe, for the most part anyway, in the free market; so they are the obvious and only option at this point.
The Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, and The New Deal, among many others, failed because of free market regulation. Similarly, our economy, or at least the financial part of it, is now failing, albeit to a far lesser extent, because of the regulation referenced above. Tragically though, the Democrats are successfully fooling themselves, and swing voters into feeling that "Republican deregulation" caused the problem. This is perfectly Soviet thinking: the economy failed not because of regulation, but because of insufficient or mistaken regulation. They feel, in their oh so sensitive liberal hearts, that if only they can have another chance their gov't bureaucrats will finally hit upon the correct regulatory schemata that has mysteriously eluded them for all of eternity.
Democrats have most of our less than qualified voters very confused about this and so they seem on the verge of "throwing the Republican bums out" even though they are the same bums they have thrown in and out throughout all of American history. It would seem we still have the same two political parties quarreling about the same two issues because most voters can't grasp the difference between them. Their default position is flip flopping back and forth based on the prevailing zeitgeist, which is usually formed by a petulant reaction to whomever is in their face most often, and that is usually the incumbents. It's not a great way to run a democracy but when Democrats extend the franchise to more and more people the result is, well, very much like the result you get when you extend the housing franchise to more and more people.
To further clarify, here is what Rep. Arthur Davis, D-Georgia (Harvard Law) said about his Democratic colleagues:
"Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable home ownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong. By the way, I wish my Republican colleagues would admit that they missed the early warning signs, that Wall Street deregulation was overheating the securities market and promoting dangerously lax lending practices. When it comes to the debacle in our capital markets, there is much blame to go around for both sides."
Here is what Alan Greenspan (ardent Republican / libertarian; past chairman of Federal Reserve) said:
"If Fannie and Freddie continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''
Here is what Rep. Barney Frank (leading Democrat, very sensitive champion of the poor) said:
"These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
Here is what slipped through the NY Times sensors in a 10/05/08 front page story:
"Capital Hill bore down on Mr. Mudd [then chairman of Fanny Mae] as well. The same year he took up the top position, regulators sharply increased Fannie's affordable housing goals. Democratic lawmakers demanded that the company buy more loans that had been made to low -income and minority home buyers..... Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, lectured Mr. Mudd at a Congressional hearing in 2006. "In fact, Fannie and Freddie can do more, a lot more."
In sum, it is very very clear that Democrats liked their massive regulations and fought for them because they enabled the illusion that unqualified poorer people were actually qualified to buy homes. It is equally clear that Republicans, to varying degrees anyway, have always wanted deregulation back to a Jeffersonian free market that would have been far more restrictive about home loans which would have, in turn, precluded the current crisis and all the derivative crises that have flowed from it. To insist that Republican deregulation caused this crisis is an absolutely perfect lie that most Democrats, especially Obama, are very willing to tell despite the obvious moral implications.
Democrats have no elegiacal feelings for the demise of the free market that made us the wealthiest country in history, in a instant no less, because they never have had the intelligence to understand it. Their egos protect them from their ignorance with grand socialist regulatory dreams that are, in reality, no more sophisticated than a child's dreams of a Santa Claus who can provide all good things. The dreams, surprise, never bear fruit as the USSR, Communist China, and Cuba found out, but this is OK to a liberal. As Lionel trilling said, "the liberal is always surprised [at each new failure]" but never discouraged by it. Failure, they rationalize, merely manifests their brave and sophisticated quest to embrace and explore a highly complex and highly nuanced modernity. They think of themselves the way Thomas Edison did when criticized for having failed in 1000 attempts to build a light bulb. He said, "look here, I've learned 1000 ways how not to built a light bulb."
Unbeknownst to Democrats, economics reached its apotheosis when Adam Smith and Milton Friedman wrote the definitive textbooks on the subject a long time ago. We have no need whatsoever for Democrats to constantly reinvent the economic wheel for us. We do have a great need though for them to somehow find some pills that will somehow boost their IQs to the point where one day they can read the textbooks and pass the test. In the mean time, we can expect more silly experiments, more lies, and a continued avoidance of the textbooks that embarrass them so much.
So, is the solution for Hank Paulson (admittedly, a Republican, of sorts) to spend $700 billion bailing out his life long colleagues and friends on Wall Street? No, his solution does not address the source of the financial infection which is, defaulting home owners. It merely addresses the failed businesses on Wall Street whose cowboy blunders were derived from, and continue to be fueled by, the defaulting home loans.
If there is a credit crisis The Federal Reserve should merely announce, loudly and publicly and often, that it is over, and then stand ready to lend money to any solvent bank or business, anywhere, at very favorable interest rates as long as they seem qualified to pay the loan back. They should use FEMA if necessary to get this done in a timely and thorough way.
Secondly, $700 billion is enough to pay 100% of the monthly mortgage payments for all the defaulting mortgages for 14 years. If the Feds, more realistically, paid just 25% of all defaulting mortgages for one year ($6000 per mortgage) the cost would be only be $12 billion, not $700 billion.
Those two measures would instantly end the horror of foreclosures, instantly stabilize home prices, and finally give an exact value to the $60 trillion of derivative paper on Wall Street and beyond that is clogging the world's financial arteries to cause the so-called "credit crisis." A mere $12 billion would instantly obviate Paulson's excuse to buy, with our $700 billion, even one penny of it.
Oddly, Paulson, in very kingly and unamerican fashion, created the context for the current $700 billion legislation with a three page piece of proposed legislation. While it has now ballooned to a 1000 page piece of pork barrel legislation, thanks to our beloved Congress, it is still Paulson who took the first bite from the socialist apple and in so doing created the entire universe of bailout options. Now, we seem stuck with the tragic and preposterous results from his spontaneous creation.
Katrina was similarly absurd. The gov't will spend about $150 billion, but, before the storm there were only 200,000 households, mostly very poor, in all of New Orleans. This means the gov't could have immediately given each household $700,000 instead of doing all that it did to save an implausible subterranean city that should not have been saved at all. It was politically important for Bush, and the Feds to a lesser extent, to look caring and sweet in the wake of Katrina; so the gov't bureaucracy swung into action at an inexplicable, but self-serving cost of $150 billion. And that was in addition to $30 billion that private insurance paid to rebuilt many of the 180,000 houses that were fully or partially lost. If the Democrats can't understand Adam Smith and Milton Smith can't they at least understand basic arithmetic?
When you hear intellectuals now asking with respect to the credit crisis: "Is this the end of capitalism?" Or, when President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, declares the death of laissez-faire economics you have to wonder in utter dismay how it is that the Democrats, and the left in general, failed to learn what laissez-faire capitalism is before they pronounced it dead and ended.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
fr846
The solution to this problem is simply to eliminate or shrink Democratic interference with the free market, in which case the current crisis would have been rendered impossible by a self-correcting free market. Republicans believe, for the most part anyway, in the free market; so they are the obvious and only option at this point.
The Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, and The New Deal, among many others, failed because of free market regulation. Similarly, our economy, or at least the financial part of it, is now failing, albeit to a far lesser extent, because of the regulation referenced above. Tragically though, the Democrats are successfully fooling themselves, and swing voters into feeling that "Republican deregulation" caused the problem. This is perfectly Soviet thinking: the economy failed not because of regulation, but because of insufficient or mistaken regulation. They feel, in their oh so sensitive liberal hearts, that if only they can have another chance their gov't bureaucrats will finally hit upon the correct regulatory schemata that has mysteriously eluded them for all of eternity.
Democrats have most of our less than qualified voters very confused about this and so they seem on the verge of "throwing the Republican bums out" even though they are the same bums they have thrown in and out throughout all of American history. It would seem we still have the same two political parties quarreling about the same two issues because most voters can't grasp the difference between them. Their default position is flip flopping back and forth based on the prevailing zeitgeist, which is usually formed by a petulant reaction to whomever is in their face most often, and that is usually the incumbents. It's not a great way to run a democracy but when Democrats extend the franchise to more and more people the result is, well, very much like the result you get when you extend the housing franchise to more and more people.
To further clarify, here is what Rep. Arthur Davis, D-Georgia (Harvard Law) said about his Democratic colleagues:
"Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable home ownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong. By the way, I wish my Republican colleagues would admit that they missed the early warning signs, that Wall Street deregulation was overheating the securities market and promoting dangerously lax lending practices. When it comes to the debacle in our capital markets, there is much blame to go around for both sides."
Here is what Alan Greenspan (ardent Republican / libertarian; past chairman of Federal Reserve) said:
"If Fannie and Freddie continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''
Here is what Rep. Barney Frank (leading Democrat, very sensitive champion of the poor) said:
"These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
Here is what slipped through the NY Times sensors in a 10/05/08 front page story:
"Capital Hill bore down on Mr. Mudd [then chairman of Fanny Mae] as well. The same year he took up the top position, regulators sharply increased Fannie's affordable housing goals. Democratic lawmakers demanded that the company buy more loans that had been made to low -income and minority home buyers..... Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, lectured Mr. Mudd at a Congressional hearing in 2006. "In fact, Fannie and Freddie can do more, a lot more."
In sum, it is very very clear that Democrats liked their massive regulations and fought for them because they enabled the illusion that unqualified poorer people were actually qualified to buy homes. It is equally clear that Republicans, to varying degrees anyway, have always wanted deregulation back to a Jeffersonian free market that would have been far more restrictive about home loans which would have, in turn, precluded the current crisis and all the derivative crises that have flowed from it. To insist that Republican deregulation caused this crisis is an absolutely perfect lie that most Democrats, especially Obama, are very willing to tell despite the obvious moral implications.
Democrats have no elegiacal feelings for the demise of the free market that made us the wealthiest country in history, in a instant no less, because they never have had the intelligence to understand it. Their egos protect them from their ignorance with grand socialist regulatory dreams that are, in reality, no more sophisticated than a child's dreams of a Santa Claus who can provide all good things. The dreams, surprise, never bear fruit as the USSR, Communist China, and Cuba found out, but this is OK to a liberal. As Lionel trilling said, "the liberal is always surprised [at each new failure]" but never discouraged by it. Failure, they rationalize, merely manifests their brave and sophisticated quest to embrace and explore a highly complex and highly nuanced modernity. They think of themselves the way Thomas Edison did when criticized for having failed in 1000 attempts to build a light bulb. He said, "look here, I've learned 1000 ways how not to built a light bulb."
Unbeknownst to Democrats, economics reached its apotheosis when Adam Smith and Milton Friedman wrote the definitive textbooks on the subject a long time ago. We have no need whatsoever for Democrats to constantly reinvent the economic wheel for us. We do have a great need though for them to somehow find some pills that will somehow boost their IQs to the point where one day they can read the textbooks and pass the test. In the mean time, we can expect more silly experiments, more lies, and a continued avoidance of the textbooks that embarrass them so much.
So, is the solution for Hank Paulson (admittedly, a Republican, of sorts) to spend $700 billion bailing out his life long colleagues and friends on Wall Street? No, his solution does not address the source of the financial infection which is, defaulting home owners. It merely addresses the failed businesses on Wall Street whose cowboy blunders were derived from, and continue to be fueled by, the defaulting home loans.
If there is a credit crisis The Federal Reserve should merely announce, loudly and publicly and often, that it is over, and then stand ready to lend money to any solvent bank or business, anywhere, at very favorable interest rates as long as they seem qualified to pay the loan back. They should use FEMA if necessary to get this done in a timely and thorough way.
Secondly, $700 billion is enough to pay 100% of the monthly mortgage payments for all the defaulting mortgages for 14 years. If the Feds, more realistically, paid just 25% of all defaulting mortgages for one year ($6000 per mortgage) the cost would be only be $12 billion, not $700 billion.
Those two measures would instantly end the horror of foreclosures, instantly stabilize home prices, and finally give an exact value to the $60 trillion of derivative paper on Wall Street and beyond that is clogging the world's financial arteries to cause the so-called "credit crisis." A mere $12 billion would instantly obviate Paulson's excuse to buy, with our $700 billion, even one penny of it.
Oddly, Paulson, in very kingly and unamerican fashion, created the context for the current $700 billion legislation with a three page piece of proposed legislation. While it has now ballooned to a 1000 page piece of pork barrel legislation, thanks to our beloved Congress, it is still Paulson who took the first bite from the socialist apple and in so doing created the entire universe of bailout options. Now, we seem stuck with the tragic and preposterous results from his spontaneous creation.
Katrina was similarly absurd. The gov't will spend about $150 billion, but, before the storm there were only 200,000 households, mostly very poor, in all of New Orleans. This means the gov't could have immediately given each household $700,000 instead of doing all that it did to save an implausible subterranean city that should not have been saved at all. It was politically important for Bush, and the Feds to a lesser extent, to look caring and sweet in the wake of Katrina; so the gov't bureaucracy swung into action at an inexplicable, but self-serving cost of $150 billion. And that was in addition to $30 billion that private insurance paid to rebuilt many of the 180,000 houses that were fully or partially lost. If the Democrats can't understand Adam Smith and Milton Smith can't they at least understand basic arithmetic?
When you hear intellectuals now asking with respect to the credit crisis: "Is this the end of capitalism?" Or, when President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, declares the death of laissez-faire economics you have to wonder in utter dismay how it is that the Democrats, and the left in general, failed to learn what laissez-faire capitalism is before they pronounced it dead and ended.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
fr846
8.09.2008
From June Cleaver to Madonna
This book (Unequal Democracy) by Larry M. Bartels is yet another socialist tome from the 1960's hippie, university mono-culture. The entire point: democracy should produce equal economic results, is wholly anti-American. If the Constitution had said that the goal of democracy was to affect equal economic outcomes throughout our society the theme of the book would have been perfectly compatible with America. But, for some reason, our founders, who created the greatest, wealthiest country in the history of humanity, forgot that little detail in the Constitution. In fact, it seems not to have occurred to anybody until Karl Marx conjured it up out of a deranged mind that eventually could be held directly responsible for impoverishing billions and killing 100-200 million human beings. Despite the deadly failure of every socialist gov't since Marx, the university mono-culture still imagines that its' wisdom can perfect the infinitely failed socialist formula in America even as billions in Russia, China, and India are instantly lifting themselves out of centuries of poverty with the capitalism that our founders miraculously gave us.
One can only wonder in stark disbelief at how liberals are so blind to what is happening so obviously right under their noses. Recently, I had dinner with a friend who suggested a Republican understanding of America quite different from the one commonly suggested by university mono-culture liberals. She teaches elementary school in the South Bronx. She told me about how some of her students had recently immigrated from Bangladesh where just 2 weeks before the start of the semester they had lived, literally, outside; with no modern conveniences including electricity, toilets, or running water. But somehow, she said, those students were performing better than native Americans who were born in the South Bronx. How could this be? The answer is simple: the South Bronx is the most liberal place on earth. Native American kids bring that culture with them to school. They feel the liberal, Marxist, Democratic entitlement attitude in their souls. In their souls they are victims, or the children of victims, who are entitled to have their needs retributively and judiciously met by their victimizers. Why should they work hard in school when Marx instructed them long ago: "to each according to his [entitled] needs".
Conversely, the Bangladeshi kids have the American, colonialist, capitalist attitude. They and their families are thrilled to be free in a capitalist country where they can create and enjoy their own lives based on what they can provide for themselves, not based on what they are "entitled" to from more productive people. Serendipitously, in a capitalist system, to provide for oneself one has to, firstly, provide more for other people. Hence, capitalism has produced the greatest wealth for all, although not the same quantity of wealth for all at any given time. After all, some have just arrived from Bangladesh, and some who arrived a long ago are liberals.
Additionally, the author bemoans the loss of union jobs in America. To the author, it is intuitively obvious that unions jobs are good jobs because they are higher paying jobs which, accordingly, result in more equal democracy. Completely and wholly lost is the idea that in a free, wealthy, growing , competitive, capitalist society one should get wages or prices that other free people agree to pay for one's goods and services, since other people provide an impartial point of view about what goods and services, at what prices, actually constitute a standard of living improvement for the purchaser. When liberal professors or socialist gov't bureaucrats makes those choices they choose wrong and standards of living go down, rather than up, as socialist history has repeatedly shown.
The liberal, union principle is that one gets whatever one can by blackmailing one's employer for higher wages. Forgotten is that, 1) everyone, including union members, must then pay more for expensive union made goods, thereby eliminating any net gain, 2) blackmail, rather than greater productivity, as a means to get ahead, diminishes an individual's, company's, and economy's focus on productivity, competitiveness, and wealth creation, 3) non-union companies and countries will have lower prices and more competitive products so that unionized companies will ultimately go bankrupt and cost the blackmailing union members their jobs.
For example, American liberals now seems poised to bankrupt GM, Ford, and Chrysler and the millions of jobs that they directly and indirectly provide, in large part because of unions. So why on earth do university liberals still imagine that unions and socialism are a good thing? The answer is that it is only way for them to participate meaningfully in a free capitalist society, that functions very precisely and with spectacular sucess, without their irrelevant academic disportment. They can come up with childlike or absurd new theories and arguments to promote old fashioned socialist regulation, and try to foist them upon us, but in the end they can't educate one child in the South Bronx or produce one competitive automobile .
If economic equality is the real issue for liberals, why do the top 1%, under Bush, now have to pay 40% (up from 32% prior to Bush) of all Federal Taxes? Why do the poor get free health care and education from birth through high-school, in addition to numerous other entitlements, without which their lives would not be possible let alone sustainable? Why did Bush introduce the first $2 Trillion budget and then the first $3 Trillion budget if not to help the poor in America with the most lavish entitlement spending is human history? Why did Bush introduce the Prescription Drug Bill - the single costliest entitlement since the 1960's - if not to help the poor? The issue obviously isn't that the poor need yet more economic democracy, it's that liberals (some of whom are truckling or confused Republicans) have declared war on the poor with their caring, preposterous, and counterproductive programs. The liberal attitude toward education and unions constitute only two of the many battles in the liberal war on the poor.
At another time one might mention how liberal, hip hop, feminist, welfare culture destroyed the idea of love and family in poor America by replacing June Cleaver with Britney Spears and Madonna. Today, close to 30% of American babies are born to single, impoverished, and liberal mothers. When the most sucessful black leader of the last 35 years, Rev. Jesse Jackson, looks at this and then wants to castrate Barak Obama for advocating responsible paternity, we don't need "economic democracy," we need liberals who can think above the retarded level.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
The intellectual Republican
f733
One can only wonder in stark disbelief at how liberals are so blind to what is happening so obviously right under their noses. Recently, I had dinner with a friend who suggested a Republican understanding of America quite different from the one commonly suggested by university mono-culture liberals. She teaches elementary school in the South Bronx. She told me about how some of her students had recently immigrated from Bangladesh where just 2 weeks before the start of the semester they had lived, literally, outside; with no modern conveniences including electricity, toilets, or running water. But somehow, she said, those students were performing better than native Americans who were born in the South Bronx. How could this be? The answer is simple: the South Bronx is the most liberal place on earth. Native American kids bring that culture with them to school. They feel the liberal, Marxist, Democratic entitlement attitude in their souls. In their souls they are victims, or the children of victims, who are entitled to have their needs retributively and judiciously met by their victimizers. Why should they work hard in school when Marx instructed them long ago: "to each according to his [entitled] needs".
Conversely, the Bangladeshi kids have the American, colonialist, capitalist attitude. They and their families are thrilled to be free in a capitalist country where they can create and enjoy their own lives based on what they can provide for themselves, not based on what they are "entitled" to from more productive people. Serendipitously, in a capitalist system, to provide for oneself one has to, firstly, provide more for other people. Hence, capitalism has produced the greatest wealth for all, although not the same quantity of wealth for all at any given time. After all, some have just arrived from Bangladesh, and some who arrived a long ago are liberals.
Additionally, the author bemoans the loss of union jobs in America. To the author, it is intuitively obvious that unions jobs are good jobs because they are higher paying jobs which, accordingly, result in more equal democracy. Completely and wholly lost is the idea that in a free, wealthy, growing , competitive, capitalist society one should get wages or prices that other free people agree to pay for one's goods and services, since other people provide an impartial point of view about what goods and services, at what prices, actually constitute a standard of living improvement for the purchaser. When liberal professors or socialist gov't bureaucrats makes those choices they choose wrong and standards of living go down, rather than up, as socialist history has repeatedly shown.
The liberal, union principle is that one gets whatever one can by blackmailing one's employer for higher wages. Forgotten is that, 1) everyone, including union members, must then pay more for expensive union made goods, thereby eliminating any net gain, 2) blackmail, rather than greater productivity, as a means to get ahead, diminishes an individual's, company's, and economy's focus on productivity, competitiveness, and wealth creation, 3) non-union companies and countries will have lower prices and more competitive products so that unionized companies will ultimately go bankrupt and cost the blackmailing union members their jobs.
For example, American liberals now seems poised to bankrupt GM, Ford, and Chrysler and the millions of jobs that they directly and indirectly provide, in large part because of unions. So why on earth do university liberals still imagine that unions and socialism are a good thing? The answer is that it is only way for them to participate meaningfully in a free capitalist society, that functions very precisely and with spectacular sucess, without their irrelevant academic disportment. They can come up with childlike or absurd new theories and arguments to promote old fashioned socialist regulation, and try to foist them upon us, but in the end they can't educate one child in the South Bronx or produce one competitive automobile .
If economic equality is the real issue for liberals, why do the top 1%, under Bush, now have to pay 40% (up from 32% prior to Bush) of all Federal Taxes? Why do the poor get free health care and education from birth through high-school, in addition to numerous other entitlements, without which their lives would not be possible let alone sustainable? Why did Bush introduce the first $2 Trillion budget and then the first $3 Trillion budget if not to help the poor in America with the most lavish entitlement spending is human history? Why did Bush introduce the Prescription Drug Bill - the single costliest entitlement since the 1960's - if not to help the poor? The issue obviously isn't that the poor need yet more economic democracy, it's that liberals (some of whom are truckling or confused Republicans) have declared war on the poor with their caring, preposterous, and counterproductive programs. The liberal attitude toward education and unions constitute only two of the many battles in the liberal war on the poor.
At another time one might mention how liberal, hip hop, feminist, welfare culture destroyed the idea of love and family in poor America by replacing June Cleaver with Britney Spears and Madonna. Today, close to 30% of American babies are born to single, impoverished, and liberal mothers. When the most sucessful black leader of the last 35 years, Rev. Jesse Jackson, looks at this and then wants to castrate Barak Obama for advocating responsible paternity, we don't need "economic democracy," we need liberals who can think above the retarded level.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
The intellectual Republican
f733
7.09.2008
"Why We Are Liberals" by Eric Alterman, Ph.D
The first question this title (by a noted Ph.D., pundit, and intellectual) brings to mind is: don't they know why they are liberals. Or, shouldn't they have thought about it before they became liberals. Or, honestly, what are they - idiots. To conservatives, liberals are, quite simply, and impolitely, people who don't think or who can't think very well. So, you have to give Mr. Alterman much credit for being a liberal who is so proud, pugnacious, and intellectual that he is one of the very few in their ranks to even consider that there ought to be a reason for being a liberal beyond, for example, hating the way Bush struts and talks or their own perfect hindsight about the war in Iraq that 1) the Congress voted for and continues to fund, 2) deposed a Nazi-like dictator who, seemingly, was 1000 times more dangerous to us than Afghanistan was before 9/11, 3) liberals said we had lost but that we are now winning after a surge which liberals said could never work, 4) still might spread democracy throughout the Middle East, and 5) may, in the fullness of time, be a decisive front in the on-going war on terror.
The book starts out with the admission that there is no doctrine to liberalism and so it really can't be taught or explained on, for example, talk radio, the way conservatism can, but that it is, nevertheless, extremely nuanced and intellectual to the point where it just defies classification or even description. It is, in short, a critique of pure reason applied to every new issue in a creative and inexplicable way and, rest assure, a very very thoughtful way that yielded superior results throughout American History. Mr. Alterman's assumption seems to be that if you've got an IQ over 125 you probably "get it" and you're in the liberal club; if not, you're a dolt conservative. He would undoubtedly appreciate the Denise Richards reality show whose subtitle is, "its complicated."
To demonstrate the transcendent, complicated creativity of liberal thought, and its patriotic connection to the founding, the author approvingly quotes Thomas Jefferson's dictum that the gov't which governs best governs least, but then goes on to assure the reader that creative liberalism can also mean the opposite. It all depends on the situation, and history apparently presents an infinite number of opposing situations. The opposite presumably is the monarchical, communist, or liberal notion: the gov't which governs best governs most. "It's just complicated", as Denise Richards and Mr. Alterman like to imply when their ability to reason falls short.
In a court room there are two sides to every issue: the prosecution and the defense. There is a reason for that which Socrates explained long ago. In this book like, admittedly, so many books there is the prosecution and the straw man, and for 400 long pages. What you get is an exhaustive stream of one sided liberal diarrhea, albeit a well done one befitting a serious minded Ph.D., but one from which it is, nevertheless, impossible to learn a thing. However, if you want to know about Rush Limbaugh's sex life or how Newt Gingrich told his second wife he wanted a divorce or any other gossip that might reflect badly on Republicans, directly or indirectly, this book is for you. It may well go down in liberal history as the comprehensive official record of the Bush years. No detail is too trivial or too irrelevant to be of interest to the author and to liberals who can't find a real reason to oppose Republicanism.
In the end the meandering author almost proves his point that there is no doctrine or organized philosophy to explain why they are liberals. If there was an identifiable doctrine he would surely have known it and explained it, or so it seems. So, you are left with a liberal passion that can only be fueled by self-righteous hatred which in turn must be fueled by mistaking feelings or reactive judgements (toward Bush's verbal skills, for example) for thoughts or reasonable arguments.
What the author blatantly refuses to say, while claiming to be patriotic and Jeffersonian, is that he is a liberal socialist who hates America like so many liberals do. He thinks nothing of telling us, for example, how superior the countries of Europe are to our own country. American moral inferiority has always been taken as a given among liberals. To them the old world is the new world simply because it has more tax and spend welfare programs. In reality, describing liberalism is no more complicated than that, and so liberals must obfuscate and distract; often with personal attacks, to survive in a society whose traditional value is - freedom from gov't, not welfare from gov't.
At one point the author chastises Hillary for deceptively describing herself as a "progressive" when asked if she was a liberal. He notes, very tactically, that "progressive" polls much better than "liberal" but argues that conservatives can demonize that word too with their "slander machine" so liberals might as well draw a line in the sand at "liberal" rather than "pointlessly dodge." Mr. Alterman doesn't seem to realize that his whole book is worse than a pointless dodge in that it is too fearful to even offer a definition of liberalism; yet arrogantly certain that his repugnant smears ought to result in public policy.
Conservatives since the Magna Carta have stood clearly and openly for freedom from gov't; whether it was a government run by monarchs, communists, liberals, or progressives. Mr. Alterman knows full well that he is a big gov't liberal socialist, but he also knows how badly those labels poll and how badly tax and spend gov't welfare programs poll in a country based on freedom. Rather than be honest about this Mr. Alterman completely ignores it, and instead has skillfully written a 400 page personal attack on Republicans which he must have figured was a liberal's only option given that, 1) he stands four squarely against freedom in a country based on freedom, and, 2) the unpopularity of this particular Republican President presents an extraordinary, once in a life time, opportunity for an emotional rant to sink into the minds of independent voters who flip-flop based on their current emotional condition.
In his grand finale Alterman assures us, inexplicably, that on "issue after issue after issue" America is really liberal, but that 59% of Americans believe gov't stands in the way of their getting ahead? He then, I swear, says liberalism is the natural political philosophy of America because it "stands for freedom of thought, science and technology, teamwork, the wisdom of the many, the sanctity of the individual, realism and yet idealism , and reform." Astonishingly, he also claims "liberalism had the strength to defeat communism - even though it was Reagan who defeated communism while liberals argued for co-existence with their sister ideology for which they spied and were sometimes hung- and is open to its own evolution, and is patriotic but not blind to its faults."
What all that desperate milquetoast nonsense demonstrates is not that liberalism can't be defined as Mr. Alterman contended in the beginning, but that it is too anti-American to be honestly defined in America. Conservatives can at least be happy about that success as they contemplate a President Obama who seemingly will capitalize on the particular vulnerabilities of President Bush - which have nothing to do with conservatism- while also choosing not to explain what liberalism is or why he is the most liberal Senator in America.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
s559
The book starts out with the admission that there is no doctrine to liberalism and so it really can't be taught or explained on, for example, talk radio, the way conservatism can, but that it is, nevertheless, extremely nuanced and intellectual to the point where it just defies classification or even description. It is, in short, a critique of pure reason applied to every new issue in a creative and inexplicable way and, rest assure, a very very thoughtful way that yielded superior results throughout American History. Mr. Alterman's assumption seems to be that if you've got an IQ over 125 you probably "get it" and you're in the liberal club; if not, you're a dolt conservative. He would undoubtedly appreciate the Denise Richards reality show whose subtitle is, "its complicated."
To demonstrate the transcendent, complicated creativity of liberal thought, and its patriotic connection to the founding, the author approvingly quotes Thomas Jefferson's dictum that the gov't which governs best governs least, but then goes on to assure the reader that creative liberalism can also mean the opposite. It all depends on the situation, and history apparently presents an infinite number of opposing situations. The opposite presumably is the monarchical, communist, or liberal notion: the gov't which governs best governs most. "It's just complicated", as Denise Richards and Mr. Alterman like to imply when their ability to reason falls short.
In a court room there are two sides to every issue: the prosecution and the defense. There is a reason for that which Socrates explained long ago. In this book like, admittedly, so many books there is the prosecution and the straw man, and for 400 long pages. What you get is an exhaustive stream of one sided liberal diarrhea, albeit a well done one befitting a serious minded Ph.D., but one from which it is, nevertheless, impossible to learn a thing. However, if you want to know about Rush Limbaugh's sex life or how Newt Gingrich told his second wife he wanted a divorce or any other gossip that might reflect badly on Republicans, directly or indirectly, this book is for you. It may well go down in liberal history as the comprehensive official record of the Bush years. No detail is too trivial or too irrelevant to be of interest to the author and to liberals who can't find a real reason to oppose Republicanism.
In the end the meandering author almost proves his point that there is no doctrine or organized philosophy to explain why they are liberals. If there was an identifiable doctrine he would surely have known it and explained it, or so it seems. So, you are left with a liberal passion that can only be fueled by self-righteous hatred which in turn must be fueled by mistaking feelings or reactive judgements (toward Bush's verbal skills, for example) for thoughts or reasonable arguments.
What the author blatantly refuses to say, while claiming to be patriotic and Jeffersonian, is that he is a liberal socialist who hates America like so many liberals do. He thinks nothing of telling us, for example, how superior the countries of Europe are to our own country. American moral inferiority has always been taken as a given among liberals. To them the old world is the new world simply because it has more tax and spend welfare programs. In reality, describing liberalism is no more complicated than that, and so liberals must obfuscate and distract; often with personal attacks, to survive in a society whose traditional value is - freedom from gov't, not welfare from gov't.
At one point the author chastises Hillary for deceptively describing herself as a "progressive" when asked if she was a liberal. He notes, very tactically, that "progressive" polls much better than "liberal" but argues that conservatives can demonize that word too with their "slander machine" so liberals might as well draw a line in the sand at "liberal" rather than "pointlessly dodge." Mr. Alterman doesn't seem to realize that his whole book is worse than a pointless dodge in that it is too fearful to even offer a definition of liberalism; yet arrogantly certain that his repugnant smears ought to result in public policy.
Conservatives since the Magna Carta have stood clearly and openly for freedom from gov't; whether it was a government run by monarchs, communists, liberals, or progressives. Mr. Alterman knows full well that he is a big gov't liberal socialist, but he also knows how badly those labels poll and how badly tax and spend gov't welfare programs poll in a country based on freedom. Rather than be honest about this Mr. Alterman completely ignores it, and instead has skillfully written a 400 page personal attack on Republicans which he must have figured was a liberal's only option given that, 1) he stands four squarely against freedom in a country based on freedom, and, 2) the unpopularity of this particular Republican President presents an extraordinary, once in a life time, opportunity for an emotional rant to sink into the minds of independent voters who flip-flop based on their current emotional condition.
In his grand finale Alterman assures us, inexplicably, that on "issue after issue after issue" America is really liberal, but that 59% of Americans believe gov't stands in the way of their getting ahead? He then, I swear, says liberalism is the natural political philosophy of America because it "stands for freedom of thought, science and technology, teamwork, the wisdom of the many, the sanctity of the individual, realism and yet idealism , and reform." Astonishingly, he also claims "liberalism had the strength to defeat communism - even though it was Reagan who defeated communism while liberals argued for co-existence with their sister ideology for which they spied and were sometimes hung- and is open to its own evolution, and is patriotic but not blind to its faults."
What all that desperate milquetoast nonsense demonstrates is not that liberalism can't be defined as Mr. Alterman contended in the beginning, but that it is too anti-American to be honestly defined in America. Conservatives can at least be happy about that success as they contemplate a President Obama who seemingly will capitalize on the particular vulnerabilities of President Bush - which have nothing to do with conservatism- while also choosing not to explain what liberalism is or why he is the most liberal Senator in America.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
s559
6.25.2008
A Ph.D in Global Warming in 26 Sentences
An Appeal To Reason, by Nigel Lawson.
This book is an extremely rational look at global warming that ultimately asks the reader, although not explicitly, to consider why human kind still has a pronounced, if not suicidal, collectivist, and socialistic instinct when in all of human history only American freedom has produced salutatory results. As the world socialistically unites around global warming here is what Nigel Lawson's thoroughly footnoted and brilliant book asks the reader to consider:
1) "The 21st century standstill [ 8 years of temperature decline], which has occurred at a time when global CO2 emissions have been rising faster than ever, is something that the conventional wisdom, and the computer models on which it relies, completely failed to predict." (page 6)
2) "They [The Hadley Centre] now forecast that, after an unpredicted, almost decade-long lull global warming will resume in 2009 or thereabouts". ( page 7)
3) "For the United States, only three of the last twelve years emerge as among the warmest since records began; and the warmest year of all was 1934." (page 9)
4) "two thirds of the Green house effect.... is water vapor....Rather a long way behind is carbon dioxide the second most important greenhouse gas." (Page 10)
5) "....the science of clouds, which is clearly critical (not the least because water vapor [the major component], as we have seen, is far and away the most important contributor to greenhouse gases is one of the least understood aspects of climate science." (page 12)
6) ...the mediaeval warm period, a benign time when temperatures were probably at least as high, if not higher than they are today ....during the Roman period, it was probably even warmer....vineyards existed as far north as Northeastern England." [where they do not exist today] (page 16)
7) "........the Greenland ice sheet appears to be melting, while at its centre, the ice is thickening. ...all to easy for Al Gore to cherry-pick local phenomena which best illustrate their [his] predetermined alarmist global narrative". ( page 19)
8) " .....making a total [temperature] increase of some 1.3 F [a prediction that is hardly alarming] over the [entire] 20th century as a whole. (page 10).
9) "...is it really plausible that there is an ideal average world temperature, which by some small departures in either direction would spell disaster? The average annual temperature is...41 degrees F in Helsinki... in Singapore.... 81 degrees F. Man can successfully live with that [ a 40 degree F difference]."
10) ".....polar bears, which have been around for millennia, during which there is ample evidence that polar temperatures have varied considerably" (page 30).
11) "Sea levels have, in fact been rising very gradually for as long as records exist, and there is little sign of any acceleration so far. .....may have been less in second half of 20th century than first." (page 31)
12) "to assess the cost of climate change [assuming climate change] in the absence of adaptation is about as sensible as assessing the risk of catching pneumonia in London on the assumption that we all go out and about in the cold and the rain in our bathing costumes. Yet to a considerable extent that is just what the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change) does." (page 39)
13) "The Dutch managed [sea level rise] even with the technology of the 16th century."( page 42)
14) Seven out of 10 [of the worst hurricanes] occurred before 1975." (Page 50)
15) "...the overwhelming land-borne mass of polar ice [that could effect sea levels] ..is over Antarctica, not Greenland in the North....where the ice sheet is growing" (page 51).
16) "the Gulf Stream [ the ocean conveyer of warm water that Al Gore says may freeze England if interrupted by warming]...is largely a surface current, and thus a wind driven phenomena..[not related to warming]." (page 52)
17) "China's....annual increase [in emission will] .... far exceed the UK's total annual emissions." [China will] increase its power-generating capacity each year by roughly the equivalent of Britain's total capacity." (page 55) ....so feeling pious about your Prius is about the only substantive thing that will result from owning one.
18) "On the one hand you [the world] increase the production in China, and on the other you criticize China on the emission reduction issue, so it is unfair."......"targets should be in terms not of greenhouse gas production but in terms of gas consumption." (page 56)
19) "It was calculated at the time that if every signatory ratified Kyoto and subsequently met its emission target, [none of the signatories actually did meet their targets] the world's temperature by 2100 would be 0.1C/0.2F less than would otherwise be the case - a trivial amount". ( Page 59)
20) "According to the Hadley Center, only by a reduction of about 70% [nearly impossible] in [global] carbon dioxide emissions would we be able to stabilize its concentration in the atmosphere," ( page 65)
21) "...indeed in 2007 China suspended its production of ethanol for this reason..[ higher food costs, consumes more energy than produces, uses land and rain forests]. ( page 68)
22) "....cap and trade is arbitrary and distortionary covering some admissions and not others....anti competitive, since permits are issued to existing emitters, and not new entrants...scores badly on transparency.. lends itself to lobbying, corruption and abuse." ( page 74)
23) "...India and China have made billions by building factories whose primary purpose is to produce greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up." ( page 76).
24 ".. [A largely gov't and bureaucracy free carbon tax such as an increase in the gasoline tax, not cap and trade] ..is the only practical means of discovering how expensive carbon needs to be in order to stimulate the changed behavior necessary to stabilize emissions...if that is the objective."
25) ..." saviors of the planet [climate warriors] are, in practice, the enemies of poverty reduction in the developing world. [due to the tremendous costs] (Page 106)
26) "With the collapse of Marxism, those who dislike capitalism..and the United States... have been obliged to find a new creed. For many of them, green is the new red." ( page 101)
27) "In primitive societies it was customary for extreme weather events to be explained as punishment from the gods for the sins of the people," ( page 102)
26) "Capitalist rationality does not do away with sub-or super-rational impulses. It merely makes them get out of hand by removing the restraint of sacred or semi-sacred tradition." Page 104)
Ted Baiamonte
www.thedumbdemocrat
The Intellectual Republican
comments: bje1000@aol.com
6.16.2008
"True Patriotism" by Eric Liu
The stated objective of this book by Eric Liu (Clinton speech writer and advisor) is to explain that lefty, socialist, progressive Democrats are really the true patriots at a time when most Americans are convinced that Republicans are the true patriots. The author concedes, quite honestly, that Republicans claimed the title and that Democrats gave it up too easily. His reclamation thesis is off and running with a little very twisted logic as follows: patriotism is, "country above self." Say what?? This means, at least to the author, that if you are a caring human being you will dutifully worship the state and cheerfully pay it higher and higher taxes in the belief that only a caring, selfless, bureaucratic, state monopoly can better spend your money than you can. It is a sentiment that would have made Leon Trotsky very proud, and Democrats quite willing to relinquish any claim of patriotism toward a country that valued freedom and individual liberty.
Republicans, conversely, from Jefferson forward, believed that patriotism was about loving an America that was based on the principle of freedom from government. Let's not forget, it was Jefferson who said, "the government which governs best governs least." The American Revolution was fought for freedom and after the Revolution there was indeed very little gov't to restrict freedom. Even after the Constitution was enacted the gov't remained extremely tiny. This is why, for example, modern Republican judges are strict constructionists, originalists, textualists, or conservatives. They want a small gov't, like the one our Founders described in the Constitution; a gov't that enshrined the individual above the state. Freedom was not considered selfish, but rather as a way to unleash individual liberty from the state bondage that had, theretofore, crippled it for all of human history.
Perhaps the second most important piece of twisted logic in the book has to do with the notion that American freedom is just no dam good. The authors demonstrate this as follows: "we hear too much about freedom from gov't, taxes, and regulations and not enough about freedom to...... ." The idea here is that freedom is naturally selfish and evil. The gov't must do good works because individuals or private groups, given their defective, selfish, and ignorant characters, surely won't. The Democrats, then, espouse a conceptual view of humankind that is the exact opposite of the concept embodied by the American Revolution and Jeffersonian Republicans. It is no wonder that Republicans took the title of "patriotic" and that Democrats easily gave it up.
The author is perfectly and absolutely oblivious to the concept of a caring, loving, and gov't free capitalism and so can only imagine more and more taxation and gov't despite the horrendous record such thinking has amassed throughout human history. He cannot consider that without the objective of securing a free lunch from a Santa Claus gov't, people will naturally revert to capitalism. Essentially, this means that they won't get one penny or one free lunch until after they have produced something that someone else wants to voluntarily buy. Everyone is encouraged to be a caring, loving, productive member of society who seeks out their neighbors' needs, and addresses them. The Democrat concept selfishly and amazingly encourages people to think only of their own needs. They are encouraged to be looking for a free lunch that only gives rise to the need for another more sumptuous free lunch, for themselves, rather than to selflessly fulfill their neighbor's need before their own.
Is it really Patriotic to be ignorant to the point where you don't know that the sudden appearance of America, freedom, and capitalism did far more to end human misery than anything that came before or after? Is it really patriotic to be ignorant to the point where you don't know what our Framers knew, i.e., that most of the evil in human history was caused by ego-maniacal gov'ts that were absolutely certain they were doing the right thing?
Ted Baiamonte
TheIntellectualRepublican
bje1000@aol.com
The stated objective of this book by Eric Liu (Clinton speech writer and advisor) is to explain that lefty, socialist, progressive Democrats are really the true patriots at a time when most Americans are convinced that Republicans are the true patriots. The author concedes, quite honestly, that Republicans claimed the title and that Democrats gave it up too easily. His reclamation thesis is off and running with a little very twisted logic as follows: patriotism is, "country above self." Say what?? This means, at least to the author, that if you are a caring human being you will dutifully worship the state and cheerfully pay it higher and higher taxes in the belief that only a caring, selfless, bureaucratic, state monopoly can better spend your money than you can. It is a sentiment that would have made Leon Trotsky very proud, and Democrats quite willing to relinquish any claim of patriotism toward a country that valued freedom and individual liberty.
Republicans, conversely, from Jefferson forward, believed that patriotism was about loving an America that was based on the principle of freedom from government. Let's not forget, it was Jefferson who said, "the government which governs best governs least." The American Revolution was fought for freedom and after the Revolution there was indeed very little gov't to restrict freedom. Even after the Constitution was enacted the gov't remained extremely tiny. This is why, for example, modern Republican judges are strict constructionists, originalists, textualists, or conservatives. They want a small gov't, like the one our Founders described in the Constitution; a gov't that enshrined the individual above the state. Freedom was not considered selfish, but rather as a way to unleash individual liberty from the state bondage that had, theretofore, crippled it for all of human history.
Perhaps the second most important piece of twisted logic in the book has to do with the notion that American freedom is just no dam good. The authors demonstrate this as follows: "we hear too much about freedom from gov't, taxes, and regulations and not enough about freedom to...... ." The idea here is that freedom is naturally selfish and evil. The gov't must do good works because individuals or private groups, given their defective, selfish, and ignorant characters, surely won't. The Democrats, then, espouse a conceptual view of humankind that is the exact opposite of the concept embodied by the American Revolution and Jeffersonian Republicans. It is no wonder that Republicans took the title of "patriotic" and that Democrats easily gave it up.
The author is perfectly and absolutely oblivious to the concept of a caring, loving, and gov't free capitalism and so can only imagine more and more taxation and gov't despite the horrendous record such thinking has amassed throughout human history. He cannot consider that without the objective of securing a free lunch from a Santa Claus gov't, people will naturally revert to capitalism. Essentially, this means that they won't get one penny or one free lunch until after they have produced something that someone else wants to voluntarily buy. Everyone is encouraged to be a caring, loving, productive member of society who seeks out their neighbors' needs, and addresses them. The Democrat concept selfishly and amazingly encourages people to think only of their own needs. They are encouraged to be looking for a free lunch that only gives rise to the need for another more sumptuous free lunch, for themselves, rather than to selflessly fulfill their neighbor's need before their own.
Is it really Patriotic to be ignorant to the point where you don't know that the sudden appearance of America, freedom, and capitalism did far more to end human misery than anything that came before or after? Is it really patriotic to be ignorant to the point where you don't know what our Framers knew, i.e., that most of the evil in human history was caused by ego-maniacal gov'ts that were absolutely certain they were doing the right thing?
Ted Baiamonte
TheIntellectualRepublican
bje1000@aol.com
5.01.2008
Sen. Joe McCarthy and the Sub-Prime Crisis
When saintly Sen. Joe McCarthy asked witnesses if they were or ever had been associated with the Communist Party they were shocked, aghast, and horrified at such blatant, militaristic effrontery. They painted it as nothing less than modern, deadly, witch hunting. In the end, the simple truth was that most of the witnesses were communists who didn't want their treason or near treasonous behavior discovered by the free society in which they lived. If not, the hearings would have been unnecessary or, at worst, a great chance for those under suspicion to triumphantly demonstrate their patriotism.
When the cold war ended we learned what was obvious, namely, that in fact there were many communists in the gov't (in fact, some tried and hung) who, among other things, were successful nuclear spies for the Soviet Union. Oleg Kalugin, head of the KGB in Washington during the cold war, said,...... "we looked among the liberal Democrats for recruits." So it's not coincidental, 60 years later, to find that Hillary (a Democrat) worked for a communist law firm while in college and that Obama, (a Democrat) "gravitated toward Marxist professors during college." It's not surprising to find that Rev. Wright (a Democrat) wants God to dam capitalist America or that Hillary and Barak are among the most liberal Senators in America, who, one might suspect, are Manchurian Candidates now pragmatic enough to hide their Marxism as mere "caring" liberalism. After all, neither has ever said how big they want the gov't to be even though it is far bigger and more expensive than American socialists of the 1920's ever dreamed. After 200 years of increasing taxing and spending they both still stand for nothing more than even more taxing and spending and regulating. Both want to socialize medicine, end free trade, and now regulate the tenebrous financial markets.
So how is that even now, after the failure of the USSR, Communist China, East Germany, North Korea, and Cuba, that communism lives, and lives in America no less? Possibly, it lives through the same mechanism that God lives, i.e., as a manifestation of our need for a loving, caring God in an often scary, painful, and, ultimately, deadly universe.
We are taught to deeply love and need our families and friends and yet they are naturally ripped from us, and often by slow, wasting, and disfiguring deaths. The more we love, the more we have to lose. It's no wonder that we are crazies with a Stockholm-like Syndrome who have always imagined communist, monarchical or benevolent despot Gods who can protect us from the cruel world we imagine they created for us.
Similarly, in the case of the current credit crisis we imagine an academically inclined "regulator socialist " God who will see that it, and all bad things will never happen again even when what seems apparent from human history is that the most regulated economies (the communist ones, in particular) have failed the most. Nevertheless, Democrats are perpetually tempted to regulate America, albeit on a much smaller scale, and they have failed here too, and for the same reason.
The Federal Reserve System, for example, was perhaps the first big regulatory effort; yet it is now widely blamed for starting the Great Depression. Then, FDR thought to fix the Depression with massive new taxing, spending, and regulating. It resulted in prolonging the Depression for 10 years that ended only with World War II, but didn't dampen anyone's profoundly blind faith in FDR or the Democrats. After the War, Keynes emerged as the most important economist of his time, and most thought, for all time. He was certain that through fiscal regulation (policy) the gov't could tax and spent its way to consistent economic growth. It turned out that the taxes necessary for the spending, exactly counteracted the effect of the spending. And in fact, there was a net loss because gov't spending is less efficient than private spending, and, disruptive to free market functioning. Nixon, a Republican Keynesian of all odd things, then tried wage and price controls, thinking he could achieve heaven on earth by mere gov't regulation. The concept is now considered absurd or child-like, at best.
The list of gov't regulatory missteps goes on and on, but, importantly, none of them have been fatal simply because none of them have been of communist proportions, despite the Democrats, and thanks to the Republicans. Freedom still lives in America! The gov't, generally, didn't tightly regulate the whole economy; so the whole economy didn't fail on a dystopian communist scale.
The current credit crisis, which has the potential to be huge, can lead us in the Republican or Democratic direction; so it's instructive to recall some of the Democrats' most recent and innovative attempts at regulatory nirvana. All agree, for example, that the current crisis was caused, for the most part by too many mortgages given to too many unqualified people; yet few can admit that gov't on both the Federal and State level was massively organized to make home ownership as common as possible. Many huge agencies, including the entire Federal Reserve System, were functioning to help people toward the dream of home ownership. Sadly, it turned out that those who were most in need of help, and got it, are the people most responsible for the sub-prime problem.
But never fear, at least the gov't housing agencies, despite what now seems like an absolutely mistaken mission, were well managed, weren't they? Well no, not exactly. The biggest accounting disaster of recent years occurred at Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae which are gov't agencies partly responsible for almost 70% of the mortgages in America. Wanting to be so carefully regulatory, the gov't hired 200 accountants to look after these two agencies on a full time basis, just to be sure, and yet it still resulted in two of the biggest accounting misstatements in history. That can be consequential when you're talking about 70% of all mortgages in America. It seems gov't agencies are stupidly conceived and impossible to manage, just as the communists found out, but on a far larger scale.
But maybe we just need the right man in charge - a sort of benevolent, socialist, monarch. Such a man was none other than Robert Rubin. He was a genuine master of the financial universe at the hugely successful investment bank, Goldman Sachs, and then a hugely successful Treasury Secretary, under Bill Clinton, who presided over eight years of economic growth. When he left Clinton, Rubin went to one of the top positions at CitiBank, the nation's largest bank, where he absolutely failed to notice or say one word about the unfolding sub-crime crises that was to cause his bank to write down about $50 billion in losses. In fact, he may be most famous now for publicly supporting the CEO responsible for the bank's losses. In fact, he publicly supported him until the very morning he was fired. Still, Rubin is undoubtedly a great and successful man, but would you want him regulating the entire economy when he is obviously and understandably so subject to human fallibility?
And then there is Hank Paulson the current Treasury Secretary; also from Goldman Sachs. He was yet another master of the financial universe who didn't remotely see the sub-prime freight train coming while he was supposedly on watch looking for it. Ironically, he is now the one responsible for new regulations to prevent the next crisis or to at least make it visible to those who will be charged with watching for it in the future.
Interestingly, the entire concept of regulation here is probably absurd since the free market stopped buying sub-prime mortgages long before gov't regulators even thought to convene a committee to discuss the matter. Dutifully though, Paulson says, "regulation must keep up with innovation," when of course that is impossible because regulators aren't innovators. They are the opposite: bureaucrats.
Paulson is equally famous for his assurances to Goldman Sachs that it should invest $100 million in, and underwrite the IPO of, a company called WebVan which took Internet orders for groceries and delivered them via truck from huge warehouses. Paulson was sure the Internet would make traditional supermarkets obsolete and asserted that Goldman Sachs would suffer the same fate if it too did not modernize with the Internet times. In a year or so WebVan and its competitors were bankrupt while traditional supermarkets were still thriving. Again, would you want this very great but very fallible man gambling with and regulating the entire economy or just running one small company like Goldman? Isn't one of the beauties of capitalism that it naturally contains failures and teaches others how to learn from them in the process?
Nevertheless, there are still those Democrats who insist that some very sophisticated folks out there somewhere can somehow produce some very helpful financial regulations. The problem is that at the subtle academic level where we are now - at least before a Democratic Presidency and Congress - no one understands regulations or their effects until it is too late.
For example, we often read about off-balance sheet SIV (structured investment vehicle) accounting through which banks are able to create entities in which they can hide what they are doing from shareholders, regulators, accountants, and/or tax collectors. This is outrageous but it is technically permissible as a response to, among other things, accounting rules that would leave an investment bank, for example, in a poor competitive position versus a commercial bank. The bureaucracy is so huge and the concepts so complex that it will take years for i-bank accounting to be equalized with commercial bank accounting on an international basis - which is important, if not critical, in a globalized economy. And, the process only starts after American and international accounting standards boards realize and agree that i-banks have found a plausible rationale to utilize off-balance sheet accounting, within existing accounting rules, and that the rules must be changed to one degree or another depending on how plausible or legitimate the rationale is determined to be.
It turns out that off-balance sheet accounting is used all over the financial world when it is necessary to hide something, and it's mostly legal. Grantor trusts are a good example. If you don't want to pay taxes you simple move assets to an off-balance sheet trust and they are then no longer taxable as part of an the original taxable entity. When Leona Helmsly said, "only the little people pay taxes" she was mostly right. It's as if our divided gov't is saying, "look, we know the regulations are stupid, but the Democrats want to see them, and believe that they work. But, if you are smart enough to find it and there is significant money involved, we've provided a loophole for you; that way everyone is happy, even those who have no idea what we've really done."
And then there is mark to market accounting rules which deal with asset valuation accounting. Enron was able to interpret these rules to mean that when it leased a gas well, for example, it could book all the revenue it would realize over the 20 years life of the well on the day it signed a lease for that well. This obviously overstated the value of Enron at any one point in time. Fast forward to today and you see i-banks forced to use mark to market rules to value assets at their current market values even when there is no current viable market for their sub-prime assets (mortgage backed securities). If homeowners were forced to value their estates this way, in today's moribund real estate market, they would be mostly bankrupt on paper too.
Despite these huge problems in classifying and valuing assets, most of the Democratic regulatory geniuses seem to agree on the new Basel II regulations which call for, primarily, higher capital requirements. The idea here is to require banks to keep more capital on hand so if there is a loss they can cover it without going bankrupt and dragging down the whole intertwined banking system on which we all depend. But, Bear Stearns made a mockery of the capital requirement rule when its capital dropped from $12 billion to $2 billion overnight. Northern Rock, in England, had the same problem. Just days before they went bankrupt they were about to declare a huge dividend thinking their capital position was more than adequate. If banks often don't know what their capital position is how could Democrat regulators know days, weeks, or months beforehand?
Of course, the more capital banks or individuals keep on hand, the less they can make from investing it. Democrats could require a 50% capital reserve for banks or 50% down payments on house purchases, but is that good regulation or would it severely dampen all economic activity and dramatically depress our standard of living? What Democrat regulator knows what capital reserve levels should be? If Columbus had been regulated away from risking his capital he would not have discovered America. Economic growth requires risk, and often great risk, and it is individuals or individual enterprises who must determine what risk is personally tolerable, not Democrats who lack the wherewithal (to be polite) to understand the nature of capitalism. To prove the point, the Soviet Union did not produce one consumer product innovation in 70 years because regulating precludes risk.
The ironic truth is that SEC regulators don't know what a banks capital is despite being charged with that responsibility under current SEC rules. In fact, they really don't even examine banks to determine capital because there are too many classes of capital with too many possible values which are often impossible to know, and they can change daily too. Moreover, assets are often hedged and insured with complex credit default swaps which then too would have to be valued to determine if they represented good insurance or not. Some CDO's are divided into 100's of tranches with 1500 pages of documentation each to explain how they are constructed and what variables are built into them that can effect their values on a daily basis. In the real world, regulators know better than to even try, while their regulatory masters never lose faith that the impossible can be done.
Managing all that risk is what bankers do for a living every day for 12 hours. And of course each bank does it in a very different way. Regulators would have to make the same commitment in time, energy and education, for the same compensation, to do it as effectively, but regulators of course don't have the same interests, abilities, incentives, or compensation. If they did they wouldn't be regulators, they'd be bankers.
This author once met a recent Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University who told me about how almost all of her graduating class had been hired away by Goldman Sachs. Hiring "quants", as they are called, has become fairly common on Wall Street because they have discovered that only the very best mathematical minds in the world can understand and analogize the tons of numbers flying around the financial world these days. The likelihood that a GS 12 auditor from the SEC could figure things out is fairly remote isn't it?
Still, the SEC is the regulator of capital requirements under the current regime. They simply don't bother much with it because they understand it is an impossible job despite how the Basil II dreamers and American Democrats need to fantasize about regulatory Gods. In the real world regulators are reduced to asking banks to tell them what they are worth. The quantitative models banks use to determine this are perfectly arcane works of mathematical genius. In short, the concept to grasp here is that boards of directors, management, customers, and bank counterparties are the regulators. They know infinitely more, and have the necessary incentive to do their jobs well, while Soviet style regulators simply do not and never can be less than ten steps behind.
In theory, capital should be set aside in sufficient quantity to cover credit risks, e.g., the risk that home owners won't pay their mortgage. And that might makes sense if you could determine the sufficient capital quantity, but even if you could, should that quantity be adjusted if the economy changes and the mortgage holders' ability to pay is then, in theory, reduced? What if interest rates change and so make all capital securities more or less valuable, or what if the overall health of the banking industry changes, or if the regulators' assessment of the operational safety of the mortgage service industry changes? Do they change capital requirements in all those cases, and if so by what amount?
Some analysts the socialist Paul Krugman would have us believe that brilliant and extensive new regulations are needed to keep up with the "shadow banking system" which has supposedly developed to evade the old regulations which stretch to 1000's and 1000's of pages. Of course new regulations and higher taxes are a socialist's knee-jerk response to every problem. In truth, some far simpler deregulation might be in order. For example, the SEC has created a cartel among three securities rating agencies: Standard and Poors, Moodys, and Fitch. Suppose the SEC had allowed free market competition to correctly rate the mortgage backed securities at the heart of the current crisis. That deregulation alone might have averted the entire crisis.
Another proposal calls for bankers to have "skin" in the game so if they go under they lose some of their own money too. But now that Bear Stearns has been bailed out, primarily to protect the counterparties to Bear transactions, why wouldn't a banker put his capital in counterparty transactions, like swaps, which would be protected in the event of another bailed out bankruptcy? One doubts accounting rules would ever catch up with this risk management strategy even if regulators or accountants were able to determine it was being used significantly.
Other problems abound. If a loan requires a corresponding amount of capital according to a Basel II or SEC regulation, a bank might simply carry the loan off its balance sheet or refinance it with very short term commercial paper that has been mostly unregulated. If Basel ll requires capital for loans of a year or longer the bank might simply securitize the loans internally as 364 day loans. Beating slow witted regulators can become a process that distracts from real risk management which is what bankers should be free to do. Sadam Hussein fell to a similar mentality while he was so intent on staying one step ahead of arms inspectors from the UN that he forgot the larger picture, which turned out to be quite deadly for him.
And then too, the biggest danger here might be in the illusion of God-like gov't regulation. If too many people believe it is perfectly safe to deal with big banks, they don't approach with the requisite amount of caution as they would in dealing with any business. The Democratic illusion of regulation means banks don't have to sell safety. Customers assume the gov't has got their backs. But, if regulators announced they were getting out of the business tomorrow, banks would have to begin selling safety tomorrow. That would be a very effective kind of free market regulation to which all businesses are subjected when not hijacked by phony gov't regulators.
But what if Democrats did somehow succeed in making banks have more capital on hand than they would have if left to their own devices? Wouldn't the banks, in theory, then feel more comfortable about making higher risk investments with their "investment" capital. And wouldn't that make the banks exactly as safe or unsafe as they would have been without regulation? And that of course all assumes there is a distinction between a bank's capital and its investment capital, which there is not. Municipal bonds, for example, were long considered safe capital, but when the monoline insurers were weakened by losses in other areas of their business the muni-bonds were then no longer safely insured, according to some analysess. In the end, all capital is dependant on all other capital, and so meaningful distinctions are problematic at best.
To be sure, the geeky geniuses at the world's banks made huge and unbelievable mistakes; seemingly out of greed and complacency. When banks make millions of loans to people who can't pay them back it's like automobile manufactures making millions of cars and forgetting the steering wheels. In their haste, the banks used instantly available FICO scores. 95% did not take the the extra 2 days to verify income through a very efficeient IRS program designd specificaly for that task. On the other hand, banking regulations run into the millions of pages and obviously didn't work either in even the simplist of bank transactions, and, let's not forget, a personal regulator and officer of the court (a lawyer) is assigned to each transaction at great expense just as and added measue of gov't largess, and that didn't work either for the banks or home purchasers. Fortunately, bankers can learn or re-learn as a matter as a matter of survival, while Democrats can not learn.
All this helps explain the huge problem socialists ran into when they tried to own, manage, or regulate business. A business is a highly individualized function of those who created it and own it; not something that can be subjected to simplistic and generalized rules applied by dull bureaucrats who fail to realize that business is the creative source of human progress; not merely a cash cow to finance their failed careers, impotent egos, or Utopian schemes.
No one buys the Democratic fantasy of God-like regulation in a more childlike way than the thoroughly insular and in-bred New York Times. They say, "[The Bush Administration is ] complicit in the credit crisis because of their the anti-regulatory ethos." It will be up to the Congress and the next administration to create the [grand, magnificent, idyllic] necessary new rules for 21st Century financial markets." Their perfect faith in regulation is like our perfect faith in God. God help us all!
Ted Baiamonte
thedumbdemocrat
the intellectual republican
th424fff
When the cold war ended we learned what was obvious, namely, that in fact there were many communists in the gov't (in fact, some tried and hung) who, among other things, were successful nuclear spies for the Soviet Union. Oleg Kalugin, head of the KGB in Washington during the cold war, said,...... "we looked among the liberal Democrats for recruits." So it's not coincidental, 60 years later, to find that Hillary (a Democrat) worked for a communist law firm while in college and that Obama, (a Democrat) "gravitated toward Marxist professors during college." It's not surprising to find that Rev. Wright (a Democrat) wants God to dam capitalist America or that Hillary and Barak are among the most liberal Senators in America, who, one might suspect, are Manchurian Candidates now pragmatic enough to hide their Marxism as mere "caring" liberalism. After all, neither has ever said how big they want the gov't to be even though it is far bigger and more expensive than American socialists of the 1920's ever dreamed. After 200 years of increasing taxing and spending they both still stand for nothing more than even more taxing and spending and regulating. Both want to socialize medicine, end free trade, and now regulate the tenebrous financial markets.
So how is that even now, after the failure of the USSR, Communist China, East Germany, North Korea, and Cuba, that communism lives, and lives in America no less? Possibly, it lives through the same mechanism that God lives, i.e., as a manifestation of our need for a loving, caring God in an often scary, painful, and, ultimately, deadly universe.
We are taught to deeply love and need our families and friends and yet they are naturally ripped from us, and often by slow, wasting, and disfiguring deaths. The more we love, the more we have to lose. It's no wonder that we are crazies with a Stockholm-like Syndrome who have always imagined communist, monarchical or benevolent despot Gods who can protect us from the cruel world we imagine they created for us.
Similarly, in the case of the current credit crisis we imagine an academically inclined "regulator socialist " God who will see that it, and all bad things will never happen again even when what seems apparent from human history is that the most regulated economies (the communist ones, in particular) have failed the most. Nevertheless, Democrats are perpetually tempted to regulate America, albeit on a much smaller scale, and they have failed here too, and for the same reason.
The Federal Reserve System, for example, was perhaps the first big regulatory effort; yet it is now widely blamed for starting the Great Depression. Then, FDR thought to fix the Depression with massive new taxing, spending, and regulating. It resulted in prolonging the Depression for 10 years that ended only with World War II, but didn't dampen anyone's profoundly blind faith in FDR or the Democrats. After the War, Keynes emerged as the most important economist of his time, and most thought, for all time. He was certain that through fiscal regulation (policy) the gov't could tax and spent its way to consistent economic growth. It turned out that the taxes necessary for the spending, exactly counteracted the effect of the spending. And in fact, there was a net loss because gov't spending is less efficient than private spending, and, disruptive to free market functioning. Nixon, a Republican Keynesian of all odd things, then tried wage and price controls, thinking he could achieve heaven on earth by mere gov't regulation. The concept is now considered absurd or child-like, at best.
The list of gov't regulatory missteps goes on and on, but, importantly, none of them have been fatal simply because none of them have been of communist proportions, despite the Democrats, and thanks to the Republicans. Freedom still lives in America! The gov't, generally, didn't tightly regulate the whole economy; so the whole economy didn't fail on a dystopian communist scale.
The current credit crisis, which has the potential to be huge, can lead us in the Republican or Democratic direction; so it's instructive to recall some of the Democrats' most recent and innovative attempts at regulatory nirvana. All agree, for example, that the current crisis was caused, for the most part by too many mortgages given to too many unqualified people; yet few can admit that gov't on both the Federal and State level was massively organized to make home ownership as common as possible. Many huge agencies, including the entire Federal Reserve System, were functioning to help people toward the dream of home ownership. Sadly, it turned out that those who were most in need of help, and got it, are the people most responsible for the sub-prime problem.
But never fear, at least the gov't housing agencies, despite what now seems like an absolutely mistaken mission, were well managed, weren't they? Well no, not exactly. The biggest accounting disaster of recent years occurred at Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae which are gov't agencies partly responsible for almost 70% of the mortgages in America. Wanting to be so carefully regulatory, the gov't hired 200 accountants to look after these two agencies on a full time basis, just to be sure, and yet it still resulted in two of the biggest accounting misstatements in history. That can be consequential when you're talking about 70% of all mortgages in America. It seems gov't agencies are stupidly conceived and impossible to manage, just as the communists found out, but on a far larger scale.
But maybe we just need the right man in charge - a sort of benevolent, socialist, monarch. Such a man was none other than Robert Rubin. He was a genuine master of the financial universe at the hugely successful investment bank, Goldman Sachs, and then a hugely successful Treasury Secretary, under Bill Clinton, who presided over eight years of economic growth. When he left Clinton, Rubin went to one of the top positions at CitiBank, the nation's largest bank, where he absolutely failed to notice or say one word about the unfolding sub-crime crises that was to cause his bank to write down about $50 billion in losses. In fact, he may be most famous now for publicly supporting the CEO responsible for the bank's losses. In fact, he publicly supported him until the very morning he was fired. Still, Rubin is undoubtedly a great and successful man, but would you want him regulating the entire economy when he is obviously and understandably so subject to human fallibility?
And then there is Hank Paulson the current Treasury Secretary; also from Goldman Sachs. He was yet another master of the financial universe who didn't remotely see the sub-prime freight train coming while he was supposedly on watch looking for it. Ironically, he is now the one responsible for new regulations to prevent the next crisis or to at least make it visible to those who will be charged with watching for it in the future.
Interestingly, the entire concept of regulation here is probably absurd since the free market stopped buying sub-prime mortgages long before gov't regulators even thought to convene a committee to discuss the matter. Dutifully though, Paulson says, "regulation must keep up with innovation," when of course that is impossible because regulators aren't innovators. They are the opposite: bureaucrats.
Paulson is equally famous for his assurances to Goldman Sachs that it should invest $100 million in, and underwrite the IPO of, a company called WebVan which took Internet orders for groceries and delivered them via truck from huge warehouses. Paulson was sure the Internet would make traditional supermarkets obsolete and asserted that Goldman Sachs would suffer the same fate if it too did not modernize with the Internet times. In a year or so WebVan and its competitors were bankrupt while traditional supermarkets were still thriving. Again, would you want this very great but very fallible man gambling with and regulating the entire economy or just running one small company like Goldman? Isn't one of the beauties of capitalism that it naturally contains failures and teaches others how to learn from them in the process?
Nevertheless, there are still those Democrats who insist that some very sophisticated folks out there somewhere can somehow produce some very helpful financial regulations. The problem is that at the subtle academic level where we are now - at least before a Democratic Presidency and Congress - no one understands regulations or their effects until it is too late.
For example, we often read about off-balance sheet SIV (structured investment vehicle) accounting through which banks are able to create entities in which they can hide what they are doing from shareholders, regulators, accountants, and/or tax collectors. This is outrageous but it is technically permissible as a response to, among other things, accounting rules that would leave an investment bank, for example, in a poor competitive position versus a commercial bank. The bureaucracy is so huge and the concepts so complex that it will take years for i-bank accounting to be equalized with commercial bank accounting on an international basis - which is important, if not critical, in a globalized economy. And, the process only starts after American and international accounting standards boards realize and agree that i-banks have found a plausible rationale to utilize off-balance sheet accounting, within existing accounting rules, and that the rules must be changed to one degree or another depending on how plausible or legitimate the rationale is determined to be.
It turns out that off-balance sheet accounting is used all over the financial world when it is necessary to hide something, and it's mostly legal. Grantor trusts are a good example. If you don't want to pay taxes you simple move assets to an off-balance sheet trust and they are then no longer taxable as part of an the original taxable entity. When Leona Helmsly said, "only the little people pay taxes" she was mostly right. It's as if our divided gov't is saying, "look, we know the regulations are stupid, but the Democrats want to see them, and believe that they work. But, if you are smart enough to find it and there is significant money involved, we've provided a loophole for you; that way everyone is happy, even those who have no idea what we've really done."
And then there is mark to market accounting rules which deal with asset valuation accounting. Enron was able to interpret these rules to mean that when it leased a gas well, for example, it could book all the revenue it would realize over the 20 years life of the well on the day it signed a lease for that well. This obviously overstated the value of Enron at any one point in time. Fast forward to today and you see i-banks forced to use mark to market rules to value assets at their current market values even when there is no current viable market for their sub-prime assets (mortgage backed securities). If homeowners were forced to value their estates this way, in today's moribund real estate market, they would be mostly bankrupt on paper too.
Despite these huge problems in classifying and valuing assets, most of the Democratic regulatory geniuses seem to agree on the new Basel II regulations which call for, primarily, higher capital requirements. The idea here is to require banks to keep more capital on hand so if there is a loss they can cover it without going bankrupt and dragging down the whole intertwined banking system on which we all depend. But, Bear Stearns made a mockery of the capital requirement rule when its capital dropped from $12 billion to $2 billion overnight. Northern Rock, in England, had the same problem. Just days before they went bankrupt they were about to declare a huge dividend thinking their capital position was more than adequate. If banks often don't know what their capital position is how could Democrat regulators know days, weeks, or months beforehand?
Of course, the more capital banks or individuals keep on hand, the less they can make from investing it. Democrats could require a 50% capital reserve for banks or 50% down payments on house purchases, but is that good regulation or would it severely dampen all economic activity and dramatically depress our standard of living? What Democrat regulator knows what capital reserve levels should be? If Columbus had been regulated away from risking his capital he would not have discovered America. Economic growth requires risk, and often great risk, and it is individuals or individual enterprises who must determine what risk is personally tolerable, not Democrats who lack the wherewithal (to be polite) to understand the nature of capitalism. To prove the point, the Soviet Union did not produce one consumer product innovation in 70 years because regulating precludes risk.
The ironic truth is that SEC regulators don't know what a banks capital is despite being charged with that responsibility under current SEC rules. In fact, they really don't even examine banks to determine capital because there are too many classes of capital with too many possible values which are often impossible to know, and they can change daily too. Moreover, assets are often hedged and insured with complex credit default swaps which then too would have to be valued to determine if they represented good insurance or not. Some CDO's are divided into 100's of tranches with 1500 pages of documentation each to explain how they are constructed and what variables are built into them that can effect their values on a daily basis. In the real world, regulators know better than to even try, while their regulatory masters never lose faith that the impossible can be done.
Managing all that risk is what bankers do for a living every day for 12 hours. And of course each bank does it in a very different way. Regulators would have to make the same commitment in time, energy and education, for the same compensation, to do it as effectively, but regulators of course don't have the same interests, abilities, incentives, or compensation. If they did they wouldn't be regulators, they'd be bankers.
This author once met a recent Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University who told me about how almost all of her graduating class had been hired away by Goldman Sachs. Hiring "quants", as they are called, has become fairly common on Wall Street because they have discovered that only the very best mathematical minds in the world can understand and analogize the tons of numbers flying around the financial world these days. The likelihood that a GS 12 auditor from the SEC could figure things out is fairly remote isn't it?
Still, the SEC is the regulator of capital requirements under the current regime. They simply don't bother much with it because they understand it is an impossible job despite how the Basil II dreamers and American Democrats need to fantasize about regulatory Gods. In the real world regulators are reduced to asking banks to tell them what they are worth. The quantitative models banks use to determine this are perfectly arcane works of mathematical genius. In short, the concept to grasp here is that boards of directors, management, customers, and bank counterparties are the regulators. They know infinitely more, and have the necessary incentive to do their jobs well, while Soviet style regulators simply do not and never can be less than ten steps behind.
In theory, capital should be set aside in sufficient quantity to cover credit risks, e.g., the risk that home owners won't pay their mortgage. And that might makes sense if you could determine the sufficient capital quantity, but even if you could, should that quantity be adjusted if the economy changes and the mortgage holders' ability to pay is then, in theory, reduced? What if interest rates change and so make all capital securities more or less valuable, or what if the overall health of the banking industry changes, or if the regulators' assessment of the operational safety of the mortgage service industry changes? Do they change capital requirements in all those cases, and if so by what amount?
Some analysts the socialist Paul Krugman would have us believe that brilliant and extensive new regulations are needed to keep up with the "shadow banking system" which has supposedly developed to evade the old regulations which stretch to 1000's and 1000's of pages. Of course new regulations and higher taxes are a socialist's knee-jerk response to every problem. In truth, some far simpler deregulation might be in order. For example, the SEC has created a cartel among three securities rating agencies: Standard and Poors, Moodys, and Fitch. Suppose the SEC had allowed free market competition to correctly rate the mortgage backed securities at the heart of the current crisis. That deregulation alone might have averted the entire crisis.
Another proposal calls for bankers to have "skin" in the game so if they go under they lose some of their own money too. But now that Bear Stearns has been bailed out, primarily to protect the counterparties to Bear transactions, why wouldn't a banker put his capital in counterparty transactions, like swaps, which would be protected in the event of another bailed out bankruptcy? One doubts accounting rules would ever catch up with this risk management strategy even if regulators or accountants were able to determine it was being used significantly.
Other problems abound. If a loan requires a corresponding amount of capital according to a Basel II or SEC regulation, a bank might simply carry the loan off its balance sheet or refinance it with very short term commercial paper that has been mostly unregulated. If Basel ll requires capital for loans of a year or longer the bank might simply securitize the loans internally as 364 day loans. Beating slow witted regulators can become a process that distracts from real risk management which is what bankers should be free to do. Sadam Hussein fell to a similar mentality while he was so intent on staying one step ahead of arms inspectors from the UN that he forgot the larger picture, which turned out to be quite deadly for him.
And then too, the biggest danger here might be in the illusion of God-like gov't regulation. If too many people believe it is perfectly safe to deal with big banks, they don't approach with the requisite amount of caution as they would in dealing with any business. The Democratic illusion of regulation means banks don't have to sell safety. Customers assume the gov't has got their backs. But, if regulators announced they were getting out of the business tomorrow, banks would have to begin selling safety tomorrow. That would be a very effective kind of free market regulation to which all businesses are subjected when not hijacked by phony gov't regulators.
But what if Democrats did somehow succeed in making banks have more capital on hand than they would have if left to their own devices? Wouldn't the banks, in theory, then feel more comfortable about making higher risk investments with their "investment" capital. And wouldn't that make the banks exactly as safe or unsafe as they would have been without regulation? And that of course all assumes there is a distinction between a bank's capital and its investment capital, which there is not. Municipal bonds, for example, were long considered safe capital, but when the monoline insurers were weakened by losses in other areas of their business the muni-bonds were then no longer safely insured, according to some analysess. In the end, all capital is dependant on all other capital, and so meaningful distinctions are problematic at best.
To be sure, the geeky geniuses at the world's banks made huge and unbelievable mistakes; seemingly out of greed and complacency. When banks make millions of loans to people who can't pay them back it's like automobile manufactures making millions of cars and forgetting the steering wheels. In their haste, the banks used instantly available FICO scores. 95% did not take the the extra 2 days to verify income through a very efficeient IRS program designd specificaly for that task. On the other hand, banking regulations run into the millions of pages and obviously didn't work either in even the simplist of bank transactions, and, let's not forget, a personal regulator and officer of the court (a lawyer) is assigned to each transaction at great expense just as and added measue of gov't largess, and that didn't work either for the banks or home purchasers. Fortunately, bankers can learn or re-learn as a matter as a matter of survival, while Democrats can not learn.
All this helps explain the huge problem socialists ran into when they tried to own, manage, or regulate business. A business is a highly individualized function of those who created it and own it; not something that can be subjected to simplistic and generalized rules applied by dull bureaucrats who fail to realize that business is the creative source of human progress; not merely a cash cow to finance their failed careers, impotent egos, or Utopian schemes.
No one buys the Democratic fantasy of God-like regulation in a more childlike way than the thoroughly insular and in-bred New York Times. They say, "[The Bush Administration is ] complicit in the credit crisis because of their the anti-regulatory ethos." It will be up to the Congress and the next administration to create the [grand, magnificent, idyllic] necessary new rules for 21st Century financial markets." Their perfect faith in regulation is like our perfect faith in God. God help us all!
Ted Baiamonte
thedumbdemocrat
the intellectual republican
th424fff
4.15.2008
Conservative Train Wreck-by Bill Press
Press' central theme, in his new book, is that conservatism started with Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley Jr., and that it failed to deliver what it promised. In fact, both themes are demonstrably false as follows: The conservative revolution against big gov't started with the American Revolution - a revolution against the big oppressive gov't of England. The next significant piece of our history was the second American Revolution of 1800 wherein Jefferson established that the American Revolution was not only a revolution against the oppressive big government of England but also a revolution against any would-be, anti-freedom, oppressive, Federalist, big governments that might develop in America.
The Jeffersonian view prevailed and became the traditional American view until Communism and the Great Depression conspired to gave rise to the idea that American tradition wasn't working. Only at that point did Kirk and Buckley take up their swords and begin the third American Revolution that largely defeated liberal, socialist, and communist thinking in the U.S., Eastern and Western Europe, USSR, Communist China, and South East Asia.
Press wants you to adumbratively believe that conservatism was a tiny movement in the second half of the 20th Century concerned largely with the tactics of domestic issues and politics, when really it is the embodiment of ineluctable human progress. When Press talks about how conservatism didn't deliver, one can only scratch one's head in bewilderment at such willful blindness. When he gets specific he talks only about domestic issues, from a tactical, political point of view, such as the conservative failure to deliver smaller, balanced budgets. Even in this tiny arena what he fails to say is again infinitely more important than what he does say.
Firstly, Newt Gingrich tried to shut down the gov't rather than allow it to grow and spend more. Secondly, conservatives ended "welfare as we know it " which, despite being the heart and soul of the Great "caring" Society, amounted to a war on blacks that destroyed their families, put more men in prison than college, and gave us hip-hop culture. Thirdly, conservatives proposed a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution that, once and for all, would have transformed and shrunk American government. Fourthly, conservatives always proposed tax cuts to free us from big gov't. Fifthly, even George Bush (the least conservative of conservatives) proposed privatization of Social Security, health care, and education. Had it not been for Democrats, Republicans would have easily won a fourth American Revolution for freedom.
Press' "idea" is that since Republicans failed to deliver the fourth tiny revolution we should abnegate conservatives as hypocritical and incompetent, and permanently replace them with liberal, progressive, socialist types who loath the basic Jeffersonian Republican concept of the American Revolution. It is impossible to describe how irrational that is, but that is what passes for publishable in modern America.
Ted Baiamonte
thedumbdemocrat
The Intellectual Republicans
bje1000@aol.com
312
The Jeffersonian view prevailed and became the traditional American view until Communism and the Great Depression conspired to gave rise to the idea that American tradition wasn't working. Only at that point did Kirk and Buckley take up their swords and begin the third American Revolution that largely defeated liberal, socialist, and communist thinking in the U.S., Eastern and Western Europe, USSR, Communist China, and South East Asia.
Press wants you to adumbratively believe that conservatism was a tiny movement in the second half of the 20th Century concerned largely with the tactics of domestic issues and politics, when really it is the embodiment of ineluctable human progress. When Press talks about how conservatism didn't deliver, one can only scratch one's head in bewilderment at such willful blindness. When he gets specific he talks only about domestic issues, from a tactical, political point of view, such as the conservative failure to deliver smaller, balanced budgets. Even in this tiny arena what he fails to say is again infinitely more important than what he does say.
Firstly, Newt Gingrich tried to shut down the gov't rather than allow it to grow and spend more. Secondly, conservatives ended "welfare as we know it " which, despite being the heart and soul of the Great "caring" Society, amounted to a war on blacks that destroyed their families, put more men in prison than college, and gave us hip-hop culture. Thirdly, conservatives proposed a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution that, once and for all, would have transformed and shrunk American government. Fourthly, conservatives always proposed tax cuts to free us from big gov't. Fifthly, even George Bush (the least conservative of conservatives) proposed privatization of Social Security, health care, and education. Had it not been for Democrats, Republicans would have easily won a fourth American Revolution for freedom.
Press' "idea" is that since Republicans failed to deliver the fourth tiny revolution we should abnegate conservatives as hypocritical and incompetent, and permanently replace them with liberal, progressive, socialist types who loath the basic Jeffersonian Republican concept of the American Revolution. It is impossible to describe how irrational that is, but that is what passes for publishable in modern America.
Ted Baiamonte
thedumbdemocrat
The Intellectual Republicans
bje1000@aol.com
312
4.05.2008
Democrats as Natural Born Liars
If your father beat you, and your mother was an alcoholic, and they both were in the the mafia, you'd grow up covering it up; lying about yourself and your family so as to appear normal to the outside world. Such behavior often leads to severe personality distortions that, in an adult, would, among other things, disqualify you from becoming President of the United States. Democrats find themselves in much the same position. They have to lie about their left-wing, America hating past to appear normal and function credibly as adult politicians.
Years ago William Safire dismissed Hillary as a "congenital liar." Hillary proved his point perfectly with her recent lie about landing in Bosnia while under sniper fire. Please note that while there was lots of news coverage about her lie, it failed to point out that, additionally, the lie exposed the fraudulency of her campaign, namely, that she has experience beyond that of a normal First- Lady. What's as interesting as the incredible lie, and what it means, is that by the time of her landing in Bosnia 250,000 Europeans had been killed there because Hillary would not let husband Bill intervene, as he successfully did - eventually, for four years out of fear that such an intervention would distract attention from what she was sure would be her all-important, career building health-care plan back home in America. It's all in the recent Sally Smith biography about Hillary, for those who insist that Democrats are too caring to lie, or to do far worse things.
But, Obama faces an even more severe truth deficit arising out of his very mis-spent youth during which, according his auto-biography, he gravitated toward America hating, "caring," Marxist professors, (not coincidentally, Hillary worked for a communist law firm in law school) and appurtenances thereof. It's not surprising, then, that Obama moved on to appreciate the magniloquent rhetoric of Rev. "God Damn America" Wright" is it? But how do you cover up all that history so you can be President of the United States - that you hate? Simple: you lie, and you keep lying; especially about the war in Iraq since that is the way to get to the promised land on the left of Hillary who, conveniently, was lying to get to the right because she was sure that was the lie necessary for a woman to become Commander- In- Chief.
Obama's lie for the army of energetic activists with "Bush Derangement Syndrome," and many main stream Democrats too, was that due to his superior, though inexperienced, judgement he had always been against the war, and accordingly would withdraw the troops immediately. Never mind that there is no obvious connection between the reasons you enter a war and the reasons you leave it many years later. Anyway, here is what Obama has actually said that an encomiastic main stream media will never put together for you:
1) "I opposed this war from the start" (speech August, 2002).
2) "I did oppose the war, yes, but after, when the invasion was finally launched, when I saw Saddam's statue topple and watched Bush atop the USS Abraham Lincoln, a banner behind him saying 'mission accomplished', I began to suspect that I might have been wrong (page 295 Audacity of Hope).
3) "What would I have done [about Iraq]. I don't know" (2004 Democratic Convention) (NY Times July 23, 2004).
4) "There's not much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage" (July 26, 2004, Chicago Tribune).
5) "Once we go in, we've committed. We've got to do everything we can to stabilize the country" ( Nov 23, 2003 on Charlie Rose).
6) "We cannot, [before the surge] through putting in more troops or maintaining the pretense that we have, expect that the situation is going to improve" ( Meet the Press 10/22/2006).
7) "The Army is broken" (Time cover story)
8) "Of 85 Senate votes, on 84 of them he voted with Hillary" (Fox News analysis)
9) When Colin Kahl, the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign’s working group on Iraq, recently [4/4/08] said: "the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60-80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 the Obama campaign laughably responded, "the writings of Mr. Kahl, one of the hundreds of outside advisers [lie] to the campaign, is not representative of Obama's consistent policy position [lie] on the Iraq war.
10) When Geraldine Ferraro said, "if Obama was a white man he would not be in this position," the Obama campaign accused her of racism. Ferraro said she was devastated by the attacks that were widely carried by the MSM. This, strangely, happened after Obama said, in the wake of the Rev. Wright debacle, "we need to have a dialogue on race." and after Obama was quoted in the the Chicago Sun Times as saying, "if I had been one of six new white Senators showing up here in Washington I wouldn't have the book contract or be running for President."
11) When radio host Don Imus was fired for saying, "nappy headed hoes," Obama said, "There is nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made any comments like that about anybody of any ethnic group." He was far, far more forgiving of Rev. Wright, who said a whole lot more than Don Imus.
But don't worry about Obama just because of his hatred of America (ok, his Reverend's hatred that Obama just happened to listen to for 20 years along with his wife and kids) or his flirtation with Marxism, or his secretly being the most leftist Senator in America, or even his lying, about, well, everything. Why worry when you can have "hope." Hope for what, you ask? Why, "change," of course. What kind of "change," ? the not easily satisfied ask. Well...."change you can believe in," of course. And if that doesn't satisfy you, you're hopeless.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
thedumbdemocrat
The Intellectual Republican
t532
Years ago William Safire dismissed Hillary as a "congenital liar." Hillary proved his point perfectly with her recent lie about landing in Bosnia while under sniper fire. Please note that while there was lots of news coverage about her lie, it failed to point out that, additionally, the lie exposed the fraudulency of her campaign, namely, that she has experience beyond that of a normal First- Lady. What's as interesting as the incredible lie, and what it means, is that by the time of her landing in Bosnia 250,000 Europeans had been killed there because Hillary would not let husband Bill intervene, as he successfully did - eventually, for four years out of fear that such an intervention would distract attention from what she was sure would be her all-important, career building health-care plan back home in America. It's all in the recent Sally Smith biography about Hillary, for those who insist that Democrats are too caring to lie, or to do far worse things.
But, Obama faces an even more severe truth deficit arising out of his very mis-spent youth during which, according his auto-biography, he gravitated toward America hating, "caring," Marxist professors, (not coincidentally, Hillary worked for a communist law firm in law school) and appurtenances thereof. It's not surprising, then, that Obama moved on to appreciate the magniloquent rhetoric of Rev. "God Damn America" Wright" is it? But how do you cover up all that history so you can be President of the United States - that you hate? Simple: you lie, and you keep lying; especially about the war in Iraq since that is the way to get to the promised land on the left of Hillary who, conveniently, was lying to get to the right because she was sure that was the lie necessary for a woman to become Commander- In- Chief.
Obama's lie for the army of energetic activists with "Bush Derangement Syndrome," and many main stream Democrats too, was that due to his superior, though inexperienced, judgement he had always been against the war, and accordingly would withdraw the troops immediately. Never mind that there is no obvious connection between the reasons you enter a war and the reasons you leave it many years later. Anyway, here is what Obama has actually said that an encomiastic main stream media will never put together for you:
1) "I opposed this war from the start" (speech August, 2002).
2) "I did oppose the war, yes, but after, when the invasion was finally launched, when I saw Saddam's statue topple and watched Bush atop the USS Abraham Lincoln, a banner behind him saying 'mission accomplished', I began to suspect that I might have been wrong (page 295 Audacity of Hope).
3) "What would I have done [about Iraq]. I don't know" (2004 Democratic Convention) (NY Times July 23, 2004).
4) "There's not much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage" (July 26, 2004, Chicago Tribune).
5) "Once we go in, we've committed. We've got to do everything we can to stabilize the country" ( Nov 23, 2003 on Charlie Rose).
6) "We cannot, [before the surge] through putting in more troops or maintaining the pretense that we have, expect that the situation is going to improve" ( Meet the Press 10/22/2006).
7) "The Army is broken" (Time cover story)
8) "Of 85 Senate votes, on 84 of them he voted with Hillary" (Fox News analysis)
9) When Colin Kahl, the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign’s working group on Iraq, recently [4/4/08] said: "the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60-80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 the Obama campaign laughably responded, "the writings of Mr. Kahl, one of the hundreds of outside advisers [lie] to the campaign, is not representative of Obama's consistent policy position [lie] on the Iraq war.
10) When Geraldine Ferraro said, "if Obama was a white man he would not be in this position," the Obama campaign accused her of racism. Ferraro said she was devastated by the attacks that were widely carried by the MSM. This, strangely, happened after Obama said, in the wake of the Rev. Wright debacle, "we need to have a dialogue on race." and after Obama was quoted in the the Chicago Sun Times as saying, "if I had been one of six new white Senators showing up here in Washington I wouldn't have the book contract or be running for President."
11) When radio host Don Imus was fired for saying, "nappy headed hoes," Obama said, "There is nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made any comments like that about anybody of any ethnic group." He was far, far more forgiving of Rev. Wright, who said a whole lot more than Don Imus.
But don't worry about Obama just because of his hatred of America (ok, his Reverend's hatred that Obama just happened to listen to for 20 years along with his wife and kids) or his flirtation with Marxism, or his secretly being the most leftist Senator in America, or even his lying, about, well, everything. Why worry when you can have "hope." Hope for what, you ask? Why, "change," of course. What kind of "change," ? the not easily satisfied ask. Well...."change you can believe in," of course. And if that doesn't satisfy you, you're hopeless.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
thedumbdemocrat
The Intellectual Republican
t532
3.20.2008
"God, Damn America"?
Ok, it must be really really embarrassing for Democrats to discover that their saintly Obama probably hates America just the he way his wife, minister, fellow congregants, and friends do; the way the O.J. Simpson jury did, and the way his children someday will. And gee, they thought he was such a nice man with such a nice, safe, pure, transcendent message. Yet, it turns out that all the transcendence and hope was in direct proportion to his hatred of America. And no wonder he was so transcendent - if he had talked in any real way he probably would have exploded in rage at the America he hates; so he wisely stuck to manipulative, air headed, pep rally chanting about hope and change.
How could such a debacle befall the self-righteous and sanctimonious Democrats. It's simple really: the Democratic ideology is inherently hateful and Anti-American, but at least half the Democrats don't realize it. Obama is the most Democratic Senator in America - actually to the left of the avowed Socialist, Bernie Sanders - and so he may be the most anti-American Senator of all.
Sadly, it has always been so. America was founded to be about freedom from gov't. Democrats hated that because they lacked the intelligence to understand how freedom can result in more good than well-meaning, heart- felt, socialist, welfare programs. It's as simple as that.
So, while Ronald Reagan held forth on the virtues of freedom, and single handedly defeated Communism (which killed about 100 million in the 20th Century) with brilliant rhetoric and the Stinger missiles he bravely sent to Afghanistan over Democratic objections, the Democrats had been spying for the communists, refusing to cooperate with Sen. Joe McCarthy (who was merely trying to root communists out of gov't), and simultaneously trying to bring their heart-felt, Socialism to American policy and legislation. Obama - an open proponent of socialized medicine and, undoubtedly, many, many other things - is just the latest Democrat to be outed for his socialist anger at American freedom.
For those who may think the above analysis about the history and origins of Democratic, anti-American, socialist, welfare is too knee-jerk, reflexive, reductive, and/or simplistic, here, from Jonah Goldberg's fantastic new book, "Liberal Fascism," (number one on the NY Times bestseller list) is what some very distinguished Democrats have said - in the Obama, anti-American, socialist, tradition - about big gov't Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Fascism, and progressivism [the term Hillary now uses to describe herself].
-W.E.B DuBois: (the most important black leader in the first half of the 20th Century) "Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th Century approach his stature. The formation of the Nazi dictatorship was absolutely necessary to get the state in order." In 1937 he proclaimed: "there is today more democracy in Germany than there has been in years past." (page 10)
-Guy Tugwell: (FDR Brain Trust) said of fascism: "It's the cleanest, neatest piece...of social machinery I've ever seen." ( page 11)
-Walter Lippman: called on FDR to be a "dictator." (page 11)
-H.G. Wells: "progressives must become "liberal fascists and enlightened Nazis" ( page 21)
-Wallace Stevens: "I am pro-Mussolini." ( page 27)
-Isaac F. Marcosson: in the NY Times, "Mussolini is a Latin Teddy
Roosevelt." ( page 27)
-American Legion: "do not forget, Fascists are to Italy what the American Legion is to America." ( page 27)
-Will Rogers: "I'm pretty high on Mussolini 'Dictatorship' is the right form of gov't if you have the right dictator." ( page 27)
-Saturday Evening Post: gave Mussolini biggest advance ever on article he wrote about himself. (page 32)
-Winston Churchill: dubbed Mussolini the world's greatest lawgiver (page 27)
-Freud and Einstein: called Mussolini the hero of Culture (Page 29)
-Puccini and Toscanini: both were pioneering Fascists of Mussolini (page 32)
-Ida Tarbell: called Mussolini the "despot with a dimple." ( page 28)
-Lincoln Steffens: about Russia -"I have seen the future and it works"
(page 28)
-McClures magazine: "Fascism is a 'great step forward' and the first new idea in govt' since the founding of the American Republic" ( page 28)
-John Patrick Duggins: Columbia University is "Fascism's veritable home in America and a school house for budding fascists ideologues." ( page 32)
-Nicholas Butler: (President of Columbia University) received a signed photo from Mussolini thanking him for his, "most valuable contribution to the promotion of understanding between Fascist Italy and the United States" ( page 29)
-James Farrell: (head of US Steel) Mussolini is the "greatest living man"
-Lowell Thomas: "he (Mussolini) stands out like a Modern Caesar - the answer to America's needs" (page 30)
-Jonah Goldberg; "communists and Nazis tended to vote together in the Reichstag" (page 77)
-Jonah Goldberg: "More dissidents were arrested under...Woodrow Wilson than Mussolini" ( page 80)
-Jonah Goldberg: "In Italy they were called Fascists; in Germany they were called Nazis; in America they were called progressives" (page 81)
-Woodrow Wilson: "The State does..whatever the times demand" (page 86)
-Jane Adams: "the individual must lose the sense of personal achievement" (page 87)
-Walter Rauschenbusch: "individualism means tyranny" (page 87)
-Woodrow Wilson: "our problem...to make kids as unlike their fathers as we can" (page 92)
-Woodrow Wilson: "Jefferson has passed...American is not a place for unrestricted individual enterprise" ( page 93).
-Woodrow Wilson: "Bismark's welfare state is the most perfected in the world" ( page 95)
-Charles Beard: "fascism is an amazing experiment in reconciling individualism and socialism" (page 100)
-Stuart Chase: "Communist Party officials...create a new heaven on earth" (page 102)
-W.E.B. Dubois: "I stand in wonder...I am a Bolshevik"
-Arthur Bullard: "Any citizen who did not put the state first is merely dead weight" ( page 110)
-Stuart Chase: "why should Russia have all the fun of remaking a world?" ( page 131)
-H.G. Wells : called for "a 'Phoenix Rebirth' of Liberalism under the banner of Liberal Fascism" ( page 134)
-George Orwell: (met FDR at White House often) "Much of what H.G. Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany"(page 135)
-Father Coughlin: "capitalism is doomed" (138)
-Nazi newspaper: described Roosevelt as a man of irreproachable, extremely responsible character and immovable will... with a profound understanding of social needs...with nationalist socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies" ( page 147)
-Mussolini: "America has a dictator in FDR" ( page 148)
-Rexford Tugwell: in 1934 "I find Italy doing many of the things which seem to me necessary" (page 156)
-NRA Study: "The Fascist principles are very similar to those which have been evolving in America and are of particular interest at this time" (page 156)
-Washington Post: headline -"Reagan Still Sure Some In New Deal Espoused Fascism" (page 157)
-Harry Hopkins: (new deal Communist) "that we (those in FDR Administration) are not afraid of exploring anything within the law, and we have lawyers who will declare anything you want to do legal" ( page 159)
-Jonah Goldberg: "in the 1960's Mao Tse-Tung's Little Red Book of revolutionary maxims became a best seller in America"
-Irving Louis Horowitz: "Fascism will return to the United States not as right wing ideology but almost as a quasi-leftist ideology" (page 198)
-John F Kennedy: "political labels and ideological approaches are irrelevant to the solution of today's challenges" ( page 211)
-Jonah Goldberg: "The Marxist explanation of Fascism was that it was the capitalist ruling classes' reaction to the treat of the ascendancy of the working class." (page 223)
-Sidney Webb: "no socialist eugenicist can be a Laissez Faire individualist... the result is this country gradually falling to the Jews and Irish" (page 249)
-H.G. Wells: "eugenics must be the central tenant of any true successful socialism" (page 249)
-Jonah Goldberg: "George Bernard Shaw was not only an ardent socialist but totally committed to eugenics" (page 249)
-John Maynard Keynes: "eugenics is the most important significant..and genuine branch of sociology" (page 250)
-Harold Laski: ( friend to FDR and other American Democrats) "Socialists have to inculcate that spirit which would give offenders against the state short shrift and the nearest lampost" (page 251)
-Charles Van Hise: "we know enough about eugenics so that if the knowledge were applied the defective classes would disappear within a generation" (page 256)
-Jonah Goldberg: "when the Nazi took over they replaced the traditional infrastructure of the state and churches with a Nazi monopoly on charity" (page 267)
-Jonah Goldberg: "Mein Kamph is replete with attacks on dividend hungry businessman whose greed, ruthlessness and short sighted narrow mindedness were ruining the economy. The Nazi Party labor union threatened to put business leaders in concentration camps if they didn't increase workers' wages" (page 288)
-Fortune Magazine: "the corporate state is to Mussolini what the New Deal is to Roosevelt" (page 293)
-Foreign Affairs: "The Italian (fascist) system treated workers better" ( page 295)
-Adolf Hitler: "Christianity will disappear from Germany just it has done in Russia" (page 365)
-Lawrence Tribe (Harvard Law School): religious views were inherently superstitious and hence less legitimate then secular ones" (page 366)
So then, if you were surprised to discover that American Democrats had a natural love affair with Communism, Socialism, and Fascism you have to wonder why. Was it due to your own failings or perhaps a liberal conspiracy in the schools and media to keep the information from you, or both. In any case, if you are still tempted to imagine that the caring, big gov't programs you support could not possibly lead to the horrors of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin then you have to wonder how it is that Jefferson knew they would - 150 years earlier. What exactly did Jefferson know. Simple: he knew men and he knew human history. But, despite his wisdom, and the country he gave us base on that wisdom, the Democrats made the 20th Century the bloodiest of all centuries. Try to imagine what would be left of the world if Jeffersonian Republicans hadn't been there the whole time as the last best hope for freedom on earth.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
the republican intellectual
thedumbdemocrat
w517
How could such a debacle befall the self-righteous and sanctimonious Democrats. It's simple really: the Democratic ideology is inherently hateful and Anti-American, but at least half the Democrats don't realize it. Obama is the most Democratic Senator in America - actually to the left of the avowed Socialist, Bernie Sanders - and so he may be the most anti-American Senator of all.
Sadly, it has always been so. America was founded to be about freedom from gov't. Democrats hated that because they lacked the intelligence to understand how freedom can result in more good than well-meaning, heart- felt, socialist, welfare programs. It's as simple as that.
So, while Ronald Reagan held forth on the virtues of freedom, and single handedly defeated Communism (which killed about 100 million in the 20th Century) with brilliant rhetoric and the Stinger missiles he bravely sent to Afghanistan over Democratic objections, the Democrats had been spying for the communists, refusing to cooperate with Sen. Joe McCarthy (who was merely trying to root communists out of gov't), and simultaneously trying to bring their heart-felt, Socialism to American policy and legislation. Obama - an open proponent of socialized medicine and, undoubtedly, many, many other things - is just the latest Democrat to be outed for his socialist anger at American freedom.
For those who may think the above analysis about the history and origins of Democratic, anti-American, socialist, welfare is too knee-jerk, reflexive, reductive, and/or simplistic, here, from Jonah Goldberg's fantastic new book, "Liberal Fascism," (number one on the NY Times bestseller list) is what some very distinguished Democrats have said - in the Obama, anti-American, socialist, tradition - about big gov't Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Fascism, and progressivism [the term Hillary now uses to describe herself].
-W.E.B DuBois: (the most important black leader in the first half of the 20th Century) "Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th Century approach his stature. The formation of the Nazi dictatorship was absolutely necessary to get the state in order." In 1937 he proclaimed: "there is today more democracy in Germany than there has been in years past." (page 10)
-Guy Tugwell: (FDR Brain Trust) said of fascism: "It's the cleanest, neatest piece...of social machinery I've ever seen." ( page 11)
-Walter Lippman: called on FDR to be a "dictator." (page 11)
-H.G. Wells: "progressives must become "liberal fascists and enlightened Nazis" ( page 21)
-Wallace Stevens: "I am pro-Mussolini." ( page 27)
-Isaac F. Marcosson: in the NY Times, "Mussolini is a Latin Teddy
Roosevelt." ( page 27)
-American Legion: "do not forget, Fascists are to Italy what the American Legion is to America." ( page 27)
-Will Rogers: "I'm pretty high on Mussolini 'Dictatorship' is the right form of gov't if you have the right dictator." ( page 27)
-Saturday Evening Post: gave Mussolini biggest advance ever on article he wrote about himself. (page 32)
-Winston Churchill: dubbed Mussolini the world's greatest lawgiver (page 27)
-Freud and Einstein: called Mussolini the hero of Culture (Page 29)
-Puccini and Toscanini: both were pioneering Fascists of Mussolini (page 32)
-Ida Tarbell: called Mussolini the "despot with a dimple." ( page 28)
-Lincoln Steffens: about Russia -"I have seen the future and it works"
(page 28)
-McClures magazine: "Fascism is a 'great step forward' and the first new idea in govt' since the founding of the American Republic" ( page 28)
-John Patrick Duggins: Columbia University is "Fascism's veritable home in America and a school house for budding fascists ideologues." ( page 32)
-Nicholas Butler: (President of Columbia University) received a signed photo from Mussolini thanking him for his, "most valuable contribution to the promotion of understanding between Fascist Italy and the United States" ( page 29)
-James Farrell: (head of US Steel) Mussolini is the "greatest living man"
-Lowell Thomas: "he (Mussolini) stands out like a Modern Caesar - the answer to America's needs" (page 30)
-Jonah Goldberg; "communists and Nazis tended to vote together in the Reichstag" (page 77)
-Jonah Goldberg: "More dissidents were arrested under...Woodrow Wilson than Mussolini" ( page 80)
-Jonah Goldberg: "In Italy they were called Fascists; in Germany they were called Nazis; in America they were called progressives" (page 81)
-Woodrow Wilson: "The State does..whatever the times demand" (page 86)
-Jane Adams: "the individual must lose the sense of personal achievement" (page 87)
-Walter Rauschenbusch: "individualism means tyranny" (page 87)
-Woodrow Wilson: "our problem...to make kids as unlike their fathers as we can" (page 92)
-Woodrow Wilson: "Jefferson has passed...American is not a place for unrestricted individual enterprise" ( page 93).
-Woodrow Wilson: "Bismark's welfare state is the most perfected in the world" ( page 95)
-Charles Beard: "fascism is an amazing experiment in reconciling individualism and socialism" (page 100)
-Stuart Chase: "Communist Party officials...create a new heaven on earth" (page 102)
-W.E.B. Dubois: "I stand in wonder...I am a Bolshevik"
-Arthur Bullard: "Any citizen who did not put the state first is merely dead weight" ( page 110)
-Stuart Chase: "why should Russia have all the fun of remaking a world?" ( page 131)
-H.G. Wells : called for "a 'Phoenix Rebirth' of Liberalism under the banner of Liberal Fascism" ( page 134)
-George Orwell: (met FDR at White House often) "Much of what H.G. Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany"(page 135)
-Father Coughlin: "capitalism is doomed" (138)
-Nazi newspaper: described Roosevelt as a man of irreproachable, extremely responsible character and immovable will... with a profound understanding of social needs...with nationalist socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies" ( page 147)
-Mussolini: "America has a dictator in FDR" ( page 148)
-Rexford Tugwell: in 1934 "I find Italy doing many of the things which seem to me necessary" (page 156)
-NRA Study: "The Fascist principles are very similar to those which have been evolving in America and are of particular interest at this time" (page 156)
-Washington Post: headline -"Reagan Still Sure Some In New Deal Espoused Fascism" (page 157)
-Harry Hopkins: (new deal Communist) "that we (those in FDR Administration) are not afraid of exploring anything within the law, and we have lawyers who will declare anything you want to do legal" ( page 159)
-Jonah Goldberg: "in the 1960's Mao Tse-Tung's Little Red Book of revolutionary maxims became a best seller in America"
-Irving Louis Horowitz: "Fascism will return to the United States not as right wing ideology but almost as a quasi-leftist ideology" (page 198)
-John F Kennedy: "political labels and ideological approaches are irrelevant to the solution of today's challenges" ( page 211)
-Jonah Goldberg: "The Marxist explanation of Fascism was that it was the capitalist ruling classes' reaction to the treat of the ascendancy of the working class." (page 223)
-Sidney Webb: "no socialist eugenicist can be a Laissez Faire individualist... the result is this country gradually falling to the Jews and Irish" (page 249)
-H.G. Wells: "eugenics must be the central tenant of any true successful socialism" (page 249)
-Jonah Goldberg: "George Bernard Shaw was not only an ardent socialist but totally committed to eugenics" (page 249)
-John Maynard Keynes: "eugenics is the most important significant..and genuine branch of sociology" (page 250)
-Harold Laski: ( friend to FDR and other American Democrats) "Socialists have to inculcate that spirit which would give offenders against the state short shrift and the nearest lampost" (page 251)
-Charles Van Hise: "we know enough about eugenics so that if the knowledge were applied the defective classes would disappear within a generation" (page 256)
-Jonah Goldberg: "when the Nazi took over they replaced the traditional infrastructure of the state and churches with a Nazi monopoly on charity" (page 267)
-Jonah Goldberg: "Mein Kamph is replete with attacks on dividend hungry businessman whose greed, ruthlessness and short sighted narrow mindedness were ruining the economy. The Nazi Party labor union threatened to put business leaders in concentration camps if they didn't increase workers' wages" (page 288)
-Fortune Magazine: "the corporate state is to Mussolini what the New Deal is to Roosevelt" (page 293)
-Foreign Affairs: "The Italian (fascist) system treated workers better" ( page 295)
-Adolf Hitler: "Christianity will disappear from Germany just it has done in Russia" (page 365)
-Lawrence Tribe (Harvard Law School): religious views were inherently superstitious and hence less legitimate then secular ones" (page 366)
So then, if you were surprised to discover that American Democrats had a natural love affair with Communism, Socialism, and Fascism you have to wonder why. Was it due to your own failings or perhaps a liberal conspiracy in the schools and media to keep the information from you, or both. In any case, if you are still tempted to imagine that the caring, big gov't programs you support could not possibly lead to the horrors of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin then you have to wonder how it is that Jefferson knew they would - 150 years earlier. What exactly did Jefferson know. Simple: he knew men and he knew human history. But, despite his wisdom, and the country he gave us base on that wisdom, the Democrats made the 20th Century the bloodiest of all centuries. Try to imagine what would be left of the world if Jeffersonian Republicans hadn't been there the whole time as the last best hope for freedom on earth.
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
the republican intellectual
thedumbdemocrat
w517
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)