This article was originally published in October 2008 just before the 2008 elections and after the mortgage meltdown that “required” the banks to be bailed out.  I am republishing it now because the old Politically Empowered site is no longer on line and so is not available.  It is, however, still relevant especially in view of the upcoming Presidential election.  GH 

There is a universal LAW that governs human interaction. It is as certain as the laws of physics and just as deadly if it is violated. There are many such laws that involve society but probably the most basic of these is: When you reward bad behavior and penalize good behavior, you get bad behavior.

The corollary is just as true: When you reward good behavior and penalize bad behavior, you get good behavior. You can substitute other words for “good behavior and bad behavior”, whether it is “production”, “performance”, “statistics” or “attendance” the concept and result is the same.

When you violate a law of physics, the judgment is swift, final and many times deadly. The universe will maim or disfigure at a minimum if violated.

In sociological terms and time frames violating the above law is just as deadly. It is more painful and far reaching but unfortunately since it kills over the course of years rather than instantly it is almost impossible, unless actively looked for, to spot the reason or real WHY. Violating this LAW will ensure a prolonged torturous existence to a whole population prior to death.

Government has a specific function that it does fairly well when it sticks to that function and does not delve into other areas where it does a horrible job. Government does well at security of the nation and protection of individual rights. When the government starts wearing other hats it not only abandons it’s basic functions, it is sooner rather than later, actively promoting insecurity AND violating individual rights… but that is another subject.

The Federal government has now committed the people of the U.S. to over one trillion (that is one thousand billion or a thousand, thousand million) dollars to bailing out (or rescuing) the economy. This was due to an economic seizure, which left the financial community convulsing in an epileptic fit. One has to wonder what caused the seizure in the first place.

There are all sorts of supplemental reasons why this happened. The banks and mortgage companies got greedy, reasonable credit requirements were abandoned etc. All of these are wrong “whys”. There is only one “WHY” and that is the twins berthed by the Congress, The Housing and Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) of 1976 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977.

The first put the gun in the hand of congress and the second fired the bullet at the heart of the banking system. When the 1976 act found there was lower lending in lower middle class areas of the nation. And since this could only be discrimination (vilified by the term Redlining) it was mandated by the 1977 act, that banks were to lend into these areas to meet the “convenience and needs of the communities in which they are chartered to do business.”

There have been those such as Aaron Pressman of business week who are saying that this is not the “reason” for the credit crisis.

There are many reasons that came after this initial act of folly. His argument is that it is silly to think that the crisis was caused by a law that was enacted in 1977.

In fact, his argument is the silly one. It is like saying the cause of the last domino falling was the domino before and not the first one to be knocked over or the person causing it to be knocked over in the first place.

No, the 1976 and 1977 housing acts are the basic incident on a chain of events resulting in the mouth foaming, tongue swallowing, eyes rolling up in the head fit.

This brings me back to the Universal LAW quoted above. No matter how well intentioned the Congress was in enacting the 1976 and 1977 bills, these bills rewarded bad behavior.

The real WHY of lack of lending in low income areas was never found or it was ignored in favor of a “politically correct” handling that was not a solution to the problem. The “solution” created a big problem further down the road with much more dire consequences.

ALL government social programs cause bigger and more severe problems precisely because they reward bad behavior and penalize good behavior. It does not matter how well intentioned the motives are.

The market place will always solve the correct problem if it is largely left alone by government, providing only security, protection of property and from fraud. It is a self correcting mechanism IF Government wears its proper hat.

We are now about to elect not only a President that will act on Wrong Whys, rewarding bad behavior and penalizing good but we are going to, by all accounts, give him a filibuster proof Senate and with that (possibly in a few years) a Supreme Court that will further erode Constitutional protections on the size and scope of the Federal government.

God help us if we do. I do not know if we will be able to return from such foolishness.

This was originally published on the Politically Empowered site in January 2010.  After that, the Politically Empowered migrated to the WordPress site. The earlier posts did not migrate with the site and are no longer available on line. So the earlier posts will be re-posted on this site.

I recently got involved in a conversation on Facebook. Most of my friends are either libertarian or conservative. One person who is of the liberal persuasion took a dissenting view. These questions gave me an insight into the liberal thinking process and hopefully I have been able to jar some of the misconceptions liberals have. Her questions are in black. My answers in blue.

Why are you so threatened? There are many cultures that have relinquished their independence for the security of the state. The nazi and the communist nations are pretty much same ideology and in the twentieth century has killed more than 100,000,000 people; 180,000,000 by governments of all types. Government is not compassion. It is force.

Why can’t you envision balance? Balance means: a counterbalancing weight, force, or influence. With the data given above, the drive to individual responsibility, self-reliance and a fundamental distrust of government is the balance. However, I do not see a need to balance freedom with slavery or the ideology that will lead to slavery such as communism or its clones, progressivism, liberalism, Marxism.

Why the extremes? Can’t you see all the shades of gray in between? Extreme? Wow. I do not see any extreme beliefs or actions here. The basic wish is to return to the Constitution and what the founding fathers envisioned for the country. These are the things that made this country great. We are in greater need of this now than ever before. Sure, there are shades of gray. The path from the light of freedom to darkness of enslavement has many shades of gray, until the path turns subtly from gray to total black.

Why do you so fiercely support an agenda that does not support you? Truthfully, I do not know what this means. Please elaborate.

Why does anything that looks different look like a communist threat? Obama is a Marxist. His mentors and many of his appointees are Marxists. One is an admitted Communist. (He was fired, but not for being an admitted Communist but for being a “Truther”) With a filibuster proof Senate, a majority in the House the first stage of government run health care has almost been reached. Cap and Trade is the next on the agenda. Between these two things, the government will be able to control every aspect of life in the United States. This looks to me a lot like either Communism…or fascism. I do not know what will happen to your Constitutional rights if this happens. And yes it is scaring a lot of people.

Why are your “facts” right & my “facts” wrong? Which facts are you talking about? You have to be clearer…but I will say that contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Why don’t you want to “do good”? This is kind of like asking “Do you still beat your wife?” But I would ask, “good for whom?” One ultimately acts in one’s self interest. I love my family and my country. I will act in my self-interest and do what I can to protect my family and this country from actions that will mean its ultimate demise.

Do you want to “do bad”?   Have I done something that makes you think I want to “do bad”?

Why can’t you make a profit AND take a little care of the less fortunate? Well, certainly I can and have. I took in a homeless couple and let them live in my home for a year, recently. They lived on my charity to the tune of thousands of dollars. They were able to get back on their feet enough to move out. Did you know that the people who identify themselves as conservative give much more of their own money to charities than those that identify themselves as liberal? I would ask you, “Why do you need the guns of the government to take by force money from those who earn it to give to those that haven’t?” There are many people who are not capable and need to be taken care of. This is the province of charity. Charity is more efficient and capable of delivering aide to those that actually need it than the government that will throw away 40 cents on the dollar in the form of fraud, and waste. Charity is certainly more moral and in every other way superior to government run programs. Also, the question points to a mindset that those making a profit do not help the less fortunate; which many (if not most) certainly do. But making a profit is itself a help to the less fortunate. It allows companies to expand and hire more people. An honest business is not taking pieces from some imaginary pie, leaving little to be consumed by the rest of us. These businesses actually create wealth making the pie bigger for everyone.

Are you so incapable of possibly being less fortunate one day? Well, probably not. That does not give me sanction to take the product of others efforts. If I did this personally I would go to jail. When the government does this, it is called entitlement. There is nothing moral about this. It denigrates the giver and the receiver.

How does another’s greed benefit you? Most people start a business or go into a business because they want to create something. Usually a side benefit is money; sometimes a lot of money. Greed is only bad when a person practices some sort of force or fraud to get money or something else of value. Fortunately there is very little force or fraud in the corporate world; much less than in government. They channel that greed into productive efforts that benefit all of us. I would venture to say that much of the fraud perpetrated on the American people comes mainly when government and corporations are in cahoots to get by government guns that which they could not get in an actual free market. This is why government has to be limited and only do those things that protect all of us from force and fraud.

Do you plan to draw social security when you retire? I’ve paid a lot of money into this scheme (by force I might add). I would have gotten a much better return on this money by investing in the stock market, or T-bills even. It will probably be bankrupt by the time I retire.

Are your parents / grandparents on Medicare? Both of my parents are deceased. As far as I know neither were on Medicare.

If your house is on fire, will you call the fire dept.? Why wouldn’t I? This is a proper function of a government, though not the Federal government.

Did you go to college with a grant? No. I paid my way.

Will your children go to college with a grant? No. Your point?

Do you go to the library? On occasion I do. Again, this is a service run by a community government not the Federal government and it is totally proper that they do. You should really read the Constitution. If you did you’d see that the Federal government has enumerated powers. The tenth amendment states: The powers not delegated to the federal government belong to the states or the people.

Isn’t your healthcare NOW in the hands of corporations who make a profit by denial of benefits? Insurance is basically a contract between the insurer and insured. It states what will be covered and what will not be covered. The contract is a protection for both parties. If there are gray areas there will be conflicts. Did you know that Medicare denies more claims on average than the private insurance companies? However, if people could buy health insurance across state lines and without all of the mandates loaded on to policies by the state governments, that competition would soon make insurance companies much more responsive. So, again it is government interference that is causing the problem not providing a solution.

Should the government not stop corporations from hiring children … if it ensures a profit, they should stay out of it, right? This should not be a federal mandate. It can and should be left to the states where per the Constitution this power resides. If enough people believe this important issue needs to be uniformly enforced across the states, then the Constitution has a mechanism to change it by amendment.

Is there really nothing to be learned from other cultures/countries? Certainly. We seem to have learned too well how to grow government to the point of unsustainable proportions. I would ask you: Do you have kids and do you really want to burden them to the point they’ll need to work their lifetime to pay off the debt we are giving them? We really need to learn from the mistakes of these countries and from our own financial folly.

Did you know that “the people” have more power in some countries than we do? Which countries?

Did you know that some people have more freedom than we do? Again, which? At the rate we are losing those freedoms, I don’t doubt it.

Why do you feel the need to gang up on someone who is different? Has someone ganged up on you? Do you feel different? If you are referring to our past conversations, I’ve tried not to gang up on you. I’d rather not attack a person. I will however attack an idea and ideology that will result in the ultimate enslavement of not just our culture but will snuff out the light we hold out to the rest of the world.

Who hurt you? Melody McGuire. First grade.

What are you afraid of? See your first question.

Why do you see evil? One only has to open ones eyes. Any government that wants to take property from those who earned it and give it to those that did not is evil.

Why do you need to be at war? I don’t know of any person that “needs” or wants to be at war. However, once at war it has to be finished. Leaving these tasks undone makes a much more dangerous world. Hundreds of thousands of individuals died when we left Vietnam unfinished after these people trusted us. This betrayal of South East Asia also resulted in millions being slaughtered in Cambodia. Korea 60 years after the cease-fire is one of the most dangerous threats we have. Abandoning Afghanistan after Russia finally left resulted ultimately in 3,000 deaths in 2001 drawing us into a wider war. We must finish what we start and keep our promises once made.

Don’t you have enough? No. Do you? There are things I want to do that I do not have the resources for…creative things (OMG). Does the government determine a magic limit on the resources that can be accumulated? What is your limit, what is enough for you?

What did you do today to make the world a better place?   Hopefully, I have helped to make a liberal think outside a narrow view of those who do not want the government to take over the province of individuals violating the Constitution in the process.

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If Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee in 2012, the GOP loses credibility on the Obamacare issue, something brought up by Rick Santorum in the debate on Tuesday night. Flip-flopping has been a way of life for media-designated frontrunner, Mitt. The question is, how does he mitigate his continuing stance on what’s become a huge, expensive problem for Massachusetts and the revelation that Romneycare was the model for Obamacare? This is from the Wall Street Journal.

…no one who knows anything about health policy on the left or right would deny…: When Democrats wrote the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010, they borrowed liberally from Mr. Romney’s model.

If the plans are not identical in every detail, they share major phenotypes: an individual mandate to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty; large transfer payments to subsidize the middle class; and much more government control over how insurance plans are structured, how medical services are delivered, and how both are priced. Snip –

Romney counters that by saying it was right for Massachusetts, but it would be wrong to adopt his plan for the entire country, and he promises to repeal Obamacare if he is elected. However, as the Journal says – he was all for adopting it nationwide until the Democrats actually did it. In an editorial on the pages of the Journal Romney stated that “a lot” of his Romneycare plan applies to other states.

But the larger and more important point is that Mr. Romney continues to defend his Massachusetts plan as a success for precisely the same reasons that President Obama says it should be imposed on all states. In reality, the Massachusetts plan is not a success and its problems are the best refutation of the duo’s arguments.

Here’s Mr. Romney Tuesday night: “What we do is rely on private insurers, and people—93% of our people who are already insured, nothing changed. For the people who didn’t have insurance, they get private insurance, not government insurance.”

Here’s Mr. Obama in his health-care speech to Congress in 2009: “If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.” And the uninsured, Mr. Obama continued, would simply receive “affordable choices” from “private insurers.”

The trouble with the Obama-Romney definition of “affordable” is that in practice it means subsidies, and once the government provides “free” health care, the private sector and entitlement state are fungible…

The problem with that thinking is that once government is introduced into the market, the market no longer rules and choices that used to be left to market forces end up being dictated by government.

… And, sure enough, due to the subsidy gusher that Mr. Romney opened, Massachusetts is now moving to impose price controls on private insurance and tightly regulate the type of care patients can receive.  Snip –

The GOP presidential field must continue to hammer Romney on his health care law because if he is the nominee, you can be sure Obama will. Our candidate must be able to be a bright example of the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats.

Mr. Obama’s unbridled expansion of government means that the election will present the electorate with the largest philosophical choice since 1980: To continue the trend toward a larger and growing government and the ever-higher taxes to pay for it, or to modernize the 20th century’s broken government institutions. Republicans do not want to wake up in 2012 to discover that they have nominated someone who is unprepared, and maybe unwilling, to lead the reform of government that America needs.

The media has given Romney a pass on this, but the American public will not, so if the GOP is serious about Romney being the candidate, this is something that can’t and won’t be ignored. If trust is one of the main three reasons for selecting a presidential candidate, then Romney has a lot to prove. Read it all here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203914304576627683818892932.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

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With all of the bad-mouthing of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan from both the Left and from establishment Republicans, a big contributor to Ronald Reagan’s economic team, has only good things to say about the plan. This is from Art Laffer in the Wall Street Journal.

It used to be that the sole purpose of the tax code was to raise the necessary funds to run government. But in today’s world the tax mandate has many more facets. These include income redistribution, encouraging favored industries, and discouraging unfavorable behavior.

To make matters worse there are millions and millions of taxpayers who are highly motivated to reduce their tax liabilities. And, as those taxpayers finagle and connive to find ways around the tax code, government responds by propagating new rules, new interpretations of the code, and new taxes in a never-ending chase. In the process, we create ever-more arcane tax codes that do a poor job of achieving any of their mandates.

…Herman Cain’s now famous “9-9-9″ plan is his explicit proposal to right the wrongs of our federal tax code. He proposes a 9% flat-rate personal income tax with no deductions except for donations to charity; a 9% flat-rate tax on net business profits; and a new 9% national tax on retail sales.

Mr. Cain’s 9-9-9 plan was designed to be what economists call “static revenue neutral,” which means that if people didn’t change what they do under his plan, total tax revenues would be the same as they are under our current tax code. I believe his plan would indeed be static revenue neutral, and with the boost it would give to economic growth it would bring in even more revenue than expected.

In the recent past, federal tax revenues from the personal and business income taxes, all payroll taxes, and the capital gains, gift and estate taxes have averaged $2.3 trillion, while gross domestic product has averaged about $14.5 trillion. The total revenue from these taxes as a share of gross domestic product averages around 16%…But a number in the 16%-19% range is as good as you’ll get under our current tax code.

By contrast, the three tax bases for Mr. Cain’s 9-9-9 plan add up to about $33 trillion. But the plan exempts from any tax people below the poverty line. Using poverty tables, this exemption reduces each tax base by roughly $2.5 trillion. Thus, Mr. Cain’s 9-9-9 tax base for his business tax is $9.5 trillion, for his income tax $7.7 trillion, and for his sales tax $8.3 trillion. And there you have it! Three federal taxes at 9% that would raise roughly $2.3 trillion and replace the current income tax, corporate tax, payroll tax (employer and employee), capital gains tax and estate tax.

The whole purpose of a flat tax, à la 9-9-9, is to lower marginal tax rates and simplify the tax code. With lower marginal tax rates (and boy will marginal tax rates be lower with the 9-9-9 plan), both the demand for and the supply of labor and capital will increase. Output will soar, as will jobs. Tax revenues will also increase enormously—not because tax rates have increased, but because marginal tax rates have decreased.

By making the tax codes a lot simpler, we’d allow individuals and businesses to spend a lot less on maintaining tax records; filing taxes; hiring lawyers, accountants and tax-deferral experts; and lobbying Congress. As I wrote on this page earlier this year (“The 30-Cent Tax Premium,” April 18), for every dollar of business and personal income taxes paid, some 30 cents in out-of-pocket expenses also were paid to comply with the tax code. Under 9-9-9, these expenses would plummet without a penny being lost to the U.S. Treasury. It’s a win-win. Snip –

…a number of my fellow economists don’t like the retail sales component of the 9-9-9 plan. They argue that, once in place, the retail rate could be raised to the moon. They are correct, but what they miss is that any tax could be instituted in the future at a higher rate. If I could figure a way to stop future Congresses from ever raising taxes I’d do it every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Until then, let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204346104576637310315367804.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Laffer touches on something in his column that might end up being a bigger problem for the 9-9-9 plan than the attempt to sell the 9% retail sales tax, and that is the elimination of the massive tax code and all of the industry that has grown up around it. In reality it would be a boon to businesses, but in Washington D.C., that constitutes a problem. Here’s what Laffer said: “By making the tax codes a lot simpler, we’d allow individuals and businesses to spend a lot less on maintaining tax records; filing taxes; hiring lawyers, accountants and tax-deferral experts; and lobbying Congress. As I wrote on this page earlier this year (“The 30-Cent Tax Premium,” April 18), for every dollar of business and personal income taxes paid, some 30 cents in out-of-pocket expenses also were paid to comply with the tax code.”

The highlighted sentence in that quote is what will get the establishment Republicans in an uproar. I touched on this in a previous column here: http://politicallyempowered.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/gop-elite-declares-war-on-tea-party/  . Jeffrey Lord over at the American Spectator goes into amazing detail to say how big a problem this is in the beltway. The revolving door between Congress and lobbying firms is a huge business in itself, and they stay alive due to the tax code and Big Government . It’s not only Democrats that need the “big gov”, but establishment Republicans. It’s obvious in their fight against the Tea Party, to which Herman Cain (and Sarah Palin) is connected.

It would seem obvious that a (Republican) party that repeatedly states as its central belief the idea of limited government has somehow managed to produce an “elite” that in fact believes nothing of the kind…

No wonder Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves at the close of last week… to say in essence — and sadly — that he was coming to the conclusion that in fact there were a number of Republicans who were on the other side — as in those who once supported the conservative argument having jumped the fence…

Lord calls these people “Clark Clifford Republicans,” basically just as tied to Big Government as those (like Clifford) who lived at its trough, feeding off of it and supporting others to feed off of it. Clifford, after meeting with Reagan in the White House and not getting what he wanted in the way of his lobbying efforts, is the one who coined the phrase “amiable dunce” in relation to President Reagan.

“Clark Clifford Republicans” defined as those who really don’t believe in the Reagan/Coolidge view — the conservative view and once upon a time the Republican view — of the world at all. Even if they give good lip service to the idea in public, it is clear from this (article in the NY Times) that in the quiet corners of this or that Washington bistro they are muttering their equivalent derogations for Tea Partiers that match in some fashion Clifford’s “amiable dunce” derisive. Although, it appears, they have dropped the “amiable.”

It’s not simply that they have a Thomas E. Dewey/Nelson Rockefeller view of the world or, to use Barry Goldwater’s pithy description, they favor a “dime store New Deal.”

The real problem here is that all of Clark Clifford’s friends across the decades have so rooted Big Government in the psychology of Washington that “Republican Elites” have elected to accept the whole premise — and for reasons having to do with self-preservation simply cannot bring themselves to get seriously Reaganesque or Coolidge-like because to do so gnaws at their own economic vitals and capacity for influence. Both now hopelessly entangled with the concrete boxes of bureaucracy that literally litter the Washington landscape.  Snip –

…where is it written that the government being targeted by lobbyists must be a $14.5 trillion-in-the-red behemoth? Where is it written that the federal government has to have almost two million employees? Some 320,000 of those employees in Washington alone? Where is it written that life will end if America has no Department of Energy or Education to lobby?

There is something decidedly off-kilter when the party elite for a party whose core premise is limited government is itself addicted to Big Government. So addicted that the very idea of eliminating program X (much less Department Y) is viewed with alarm as an expression of Outside the Mainstreamness or, more viscerally, “paranoia.” Creating in turn the impression to a growing number of alarmed Americans that the Party of Reagan has become the Party of Jabba the Hutt…

Whereas most Americans don’t particularly mind “lobbying,” when lobbying becomes a big business that needs a big government in order to survive, then lobbyists, whether they have an “R” or a “D” after their names, become anti-American. Lord mentions Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman who left Congress for lobbying firm Clark and Weinstock. He was one of those in the NY Times article that was bad-mouthing Tea Partiers.

…Clark & Weinstock spends its days and nights figuring out how to help regular Americans navigate the indecipherable maze of Big Government literally constructed by Mr. Clifford’s presidential heroes and friends over the course of the last eight decades. With not inconsiderable help from “the Republican elite.”

And, you can believe, Clark & Weinstock charges a pretty penny to navigate you. Making Mr. Weber surely a pretty well off guy.  Snip –

…Vin Weber and Clark & Weinstock are not the abnormal in the world of Washington — they are the norm. In fact, as of 2007 there were 17,000 registered lobbyists in Washington. Every last one of them doing their version of what Mr. Weber and Clark & Weinstock do.  Snip –

…The big deal here is that after 80-plus years of this mentality growing like topsy in the nation’s capital, on the eve of a presidential election in which the incumbent, a left-wing liberal Democrat, is leading the charge to make this a nation of, by and for the federal government — the so-called “Republican elite” is sitting in Washington feeding — literally — off of this Big Government mindset.

As you can see, we lowly American taxpayers have huge obstacles to overcome. It will take more than one or two election cycles to cure our ailing economy and our ailing corrupt political system. When everyone is feeding off the government trough, nobody wants the elaborate buffet to come to an end. Spread the word. These government pigs won’t leave the table willingly, so a fight is going to have to come to a head, and soon. Read all of Lord here: http://spectator.org/archives/2011/10/18/clark-clifford-republicans

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The Tea Party is at war. Did you know that? Well, let’s say the Tea Party is at war because those establishment types in the Republican Party can’t see that it’s a new day in the country, and the Republican Party has moved as far left as they will ever be able to because one more step to the left will drive the country off the cliff. Oh, and Chuck Schumer doesn’t like the Tea Party either, so he’s also declaring war. Well, what a surprise – Herman Cain is doing well, so why wouldn’t both parties feel threatened that their power is dwindling. This is from Michael E. Needham over at Heritage Action for America as posted on the Real Clear Politics site.

Americans’ dissatisfaction with government, record-high disapproval of Congress and frustration with the current and past Administration is a reflection of the fact that our current political system is one that favors the powerful at the expense of those striving to build towards the American dream.

The Bigs – Big Wall Street, Big Government, Big Labor, and Big Business – are all protected classes in the American political system. The tax code, regulatory regime, and campaign finance laws are all written by those powerful enough to hire an army of lobbyists to descend on Washington. Labor unions pushed their way ahead of bond holders when the Establishment bailed out Chrysler. Solyndra got venture funding from the middle class taxpayer after spending $1.9 million lobbying the Establishment.

This corrupt nexus is at the heart of the dissatisfaction across the country towards Washington.

Our Founders created a Republic in which individuals were limited only by their determination to work hard…the great power of the idea behind America is that freedom, opportunity and prosperity are available to all who are willing to work for it…

But the suffocating culture of The Establishment that now permeates the halls of power in Washington threatens to undermine the very bedrock of our country. This situation brings us to the moment in history at which we have arrived. Snip –

…the Establishment is a bipartisan problem plaguing our nation. But this does not necessarily mean that the solution to the problem must be found outside the two-party system. Snip –

Since the 2010-midterm elections there has been a quiet war going on within the Republican Party between the Establishment and the insurgent tea party movement. It is the outcome of this war, rather than whether a centrist third party candidate will emerge, that we believe is the crucial factor in determining whether or not our country will be able to rid itself of the destructive culture of “The Bigs.”

Who will prevail? We cannot afford the go-along/get-along attitude of the establishment political power structure in Washington, D.C. Those who suffer from Washingtonitis don’t even realize they’re infected by the disease. They have been bombarded by praise or have been treated as “special” for so long that they now believe they are more important than the survival of the country itself. Maybe they don’t really believe that, but their arrogance blinds them to the fact that they are sinking the ship of state, and they’ll go down with it because we’ll make sure they do. We’ll make sure those lifeboats they think are inflated for them and them alone have pinpricks in them. If we sink they aren’t going to be Molly Brown. Read it all here:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/10/17/the_washington_establishments_big_problem_111705.html

Here are some quotes from some establishment GOP types. This is from Rush Limbaugh.

…The Tea Party is under assault from the Democrats and the Republican elite, and now the battle has been brought full fore in the pages of the New York Times Magazine.

There’s some quotes from various people in this story. Bill Kristol on the Tea Party: “It’s an infantile form of conservatism.” Scott Reed, veteran strategist and lobbyist: “I think it’s waning now,” talking to the reporter of the story about the Tea Party’s influence. “Party leaders have managed to bleed some of the anti-establishment intensity out of the movement, Reed said, by slyly embracing Tea Party sympathizers in Congress, rather than treating them as ‘those people.’ Did he mean to say that the party was slowly co-opting the Tea Partiers? ‘Trying to,’ Reed said. ‘And that’s the secret to politics: trying to control a segment of people without those people recognizing that you’re trying to control them.’” This is a Republican consultant talking about how to neutralize the Tea Party.

John Feehery, a lobbyist who was once a senior House aide I think to Denny Hastert, is also quoted. “The thing I get a kick out of is these Tea Party people calling me a RINO. No, guys, I’ve been a Republican all along. You go off on your own little world and then come back and say it’s your party. Well, this ain’t your party.” Vin Weber, regarding the Tea Party lawmakers. Vin Weber is a former member of Congress from Minnesota, now a big time lobbyist and Republican consultant. Vin Weber: “One thing I do notice about ‘em is when I ask them, ‘So how are you enjoying it?’” talking about the Tea Party members of Congress, “almost none of them say, ‘Oh, jeez, I’m really loving this.’ They all say some version of, ‘This is not what I’d want to be doing, but I’ve got to do it for the country.’” So, “Weber seemed genuinely surprised that this aversion to Washington didn’t melt away once they arrived in town.”

Gosh, what have we always speculated here? Or what have we always known? One of the biggest problems is conservatives run around the country, campaign, and get elected on conservatism; then go to Washington, get corrupted and co-opted by the culture there. Here’s Vin Weber admitting it! Vin Weber is admitting it and shocked and stunned that the Tea Party guys haven’t fallen for it yet. He says he’s surprised. Yeah, they’re not really loving this. They’re here not doing what they want to do; they’re trying to save the country. “Weber seemed genuinely surprised that this aversion to Washington didn’t melt away once they got to town.” He says, ‘I can just tell you when I came to Congress we were rabble-rousers, but, boy, if you’d asked any of us six months into it how we were enjoying it, we woulda said, “This is the greatest opportunity of a lifetime.”

Read all of Rush’s observations and watch him talk about it here:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/13/rush_limbaugh_gop_establishment_declares_war_on_tea_party.html

Of course, the Tea Party has been vilified from the very beginning by the wackos in the Democrat Party, but it’s really going to get ugly now.

…In a memo to his Democratic colleagues, Schumer lays out his preferred strategy of blaming “Tea Party Republicans” for the sorry state of the economy. In this case, Schumer argues, Democrats should blame the  “extreme” GOP opposition to the President Obama’s jobs bill (defeated last night in the Senate) for putting the economy at risk. As the debate over jobs moves forward, he writes, “the Tea Party’s growing unpopularity has the potential to be the GOP’s Achilles’ Heel.”  Snip –

“With the economy at a crossroads, the GOP’s current political strategy — block anything that could improve the economy, lest it boost the President’s standing — has the potential to backfire,” Schumer writes. “By linking the GOP to its extreme Tea Party fringe, Democrats can bolster the prospects for the President’s jobs ideas, or at least make clear who is responsible for the stalling of the recovery.”

He goes on to coin a number of new terms that you can expect to hear parroted ad nauseam by Democrats and other liberal talking heads in the coming weeks and months: “Democrats can make this link by branding the school of thought that resists against any job-creation measures as ‘Tea Party economics.’ The opponents of the President’s jobs proposals should be invoked as ‘Tea Party Republicans.’ If their obstruction continues, it will risk a ‘Tea Party recession.’”

At the same time, Senate Democrats will seek to advance the president’s plan “one plank at a time.” As they do, Schumer argues, “it will only get harder for Republicans to sustain their blanket opposition to the President’s policies.”

Schumer’s strategy is to essentially to get Senate Democrats in line with the Obama administration campaign, seeking to pin the blame for the poor economy on Republicans, despite the fact that they control only one house of Congress.

Well, with the GOP Establishment already wimping out and joining the enemy in berating the Tea Party, who knows how this will play out. If the GOP loses in the next election, it will be its own fault for trying to run a 21^st Century country in the same old 20^th Century way. If the GOP doesn’t wake up and see that the old game is over, then our country might be over. The old game is what has gotten us to this place as it is. Read it all here:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279914/schumer-declares-war-tea-party-andrew-stiles

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Americans complain. Americans fear their government. Americans are worried about the future of the country. If we are so worried and fearful, why do we keep electing the same politicians who got us to this point – the point where we’re nearing bankruptcy but no one has the will to do what’s right to save the country? Are we, as a nation, suicidal? If you answered, “no” then what’s the explanation for continuing to elect the same people over and over again expecting different results? Insanity? That’s much better than suicidal, right? Or is it the same thing? Maybe it’s finally time for Americans to put their votes where their mouths are. This is from Ned Ryun in The American Spectator.

During the American Revolution, roughly a third of all colonists supported King George III, and, for the most part, Parliament. Though completely surrounded by the wildfire of political rebellion, these Tories continued to support the status quo. Thankfully, our founders did not, no more than the Tea Party accepts today’s status quo. The Tea Party’s rise has been called the second American Revolution–a peaceful one of ballots, not bullets–as more and more Americans came to the realization that the majority of elected officials serve their own self-interest, or the interests of their cronies. Congress’s approval rating stands at 13 percent, according to Gallup, or about one third of what King George’s support was. In 2009, a full 76 percent of people polled said that elected officials put their own interests ahead of those of the American people. Yet despite such numbers, in 2010, during one of the most dramatic political shifts in decades, more than 80 percent of incumbents at all levels won reelection, largely preserving the political status quo.

At first glance, it doesn’t make sense: a highly unpopular Congress (and president, for that matter), governing over an economy and country careening out of control, yet some eight out of 10 members of Congress can expect to be re-elected. Many have served for years and have brought this country to its current predicament. Yet they keep winning re-election to continue their tenures of failure: If current spending levels hold, the United States’ public debt will eclipse 300 percent of our economy before midcentury. And when confronted with massive debt, our leaders, lacking the political courage to undertake fundamental change, shave infinitesimal amounts here and there, exfoliating the elephant of debt while it keeps plowing ahead toward the inevitable cliff.

How can this be? Long-time incumbents, a Ruling Class, if you will, with low approval ratings, making bad decision after bad decision, yet still getting re-elected? This is because the American people have been up against a protection racket for nearly a century now, ever since Progressives established a system of government that allowed our country to drift away from the Founders’ original vision of limited government and individual freedom. The Progressive “reforms” have, over time, continued to centralize federal power, and have made our elected officials more powerful and less accountable.

With all power deriving from the people, our elected officials are supposedly there to serve, though at times they prefer that the American people serve them. We provide every dollar that pays them, their staffs, their expenses, and every dollar that funds our government. Yet the American people in recent times have been ignored by their officials (think most recently the Cut, Cap and Balance Plan, which nearly 70 percent of the American people supported but was never taken up in the Senate) and treated with disdain.

As I read this I kept thinking about the criticism of Herman Cain never having won an election and never holding public office. What’s his response to Americans continuing to elect “politicians?” He says, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?” Yes, that’s a major question in this election in particular. The founders didn’t believe in professional politicians. Our senators and representatives were supposed to be civilians who took these jobs temporarily to serve their community and their states. Lifelong members of the political class like Joe Biden and Harry Reid aren’t supposed to be the norm. Read it all here:  http://spectator.org/archives/2011/10/10/breaking-the-ruling-class

And, speaking of Herman Cain, the reason he appeals to many Americans is just this everyman, down-to-earth, love of country and can-do spirit that is sorely missing in today’s “politicians” or as Mr. Ryun called them the “ruling class.” This is from Ed Kaitz of the American Thinker website.

Niccolò Machiavelli once said that “the man who adapts his course of action to the nature of the times will succeed, and likewise, the man who sets his course of action out of tune with the times will come to grief.”

…based on the current “nature of the times” in America, Herman Cain must be the GOP nominee for president.  In fact, Cain’s nomination represents what could be the last and best opportunity Americans have to pry our battered country out from the clutches of the increasingly strident, divisive, and Marxist pro-Obama Democrat left.

Conversely, if the nomination goes to Rick Perry or Mitt Romney, it will simply confirm my suspicion that the GOP base is absolutely clueless when it comes to appreciating the unique contours of the American left’s long-term strategy to undermine our nation’s constitutional heritage and disposition.

The left has successfully poisoned any possibility for a white conservative to attract enough minority voters on a platform based on America’s colorblind founding principles.  Even a Romney or Perry victory, in other words, will leave America as viciously divided as ever and will merely set the stage for more Republican compromise with political opponents who rarely if ever compromise.

Martin Luther King, in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail,” said that when the “disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.”  In addition, said King, “[black people] were carrying our whole nation back to those great walls of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”

King’s early Tea Party proclivities don’t seem to garner much attention these days.

Indeed, soon after King issued those inspiring remarks, the anti-American left began a long-term and sinister project to wed Marxist ideology to racial politics in order to frighten white conservatives into questioning the very basis of their country’s constitutional identity.  The left’s goal back then was, according to philosopher Eric Hoffer, to “soften up the white majority and beat it into a pulp.”

The left’s long-term objective was to both define a new standard of civic righteousness and increase the power of the state by championing the cause of America’s minority populations against what the left considered the “oppressive” merit-based ethos of “reactionary” white America.  Epithets such as “Oreo” and “sellout” and “acting white,” for example, were fashioned by leftists in order to intimidate both whites and minorities into questioning the commonsense beliefs about personal initiative and self-reliance built into the European Enlightenment tradition.  Duke professor Stanley Fish, for example, captured the essence of this racial strategy a couple of decades later in a defense of affirmative action that he wrote for the Atlantic back in 1993:

Individualism, fairness, merit — these three words are continually in the mouths of our up to date, newly respectable bigots who have learned that they need not put on a white hood or bar access to the ballot box in order to secure their ends.

And over the years, while a sincere but incredibly naïve GOP pinned its election fortunes on the “economy,” thousands of teachers in thousands of classrooms across the country found more and more reasons not to present America’s founding tradition in a positive light.

Enter Herman Cain, an optimistic, happy warrior who happens to be black – a man who loves this country and will fight for it. He’s a man unafraid of the difficulty of the task at hand. He can throw so many hammers through so many sacred cows’ windows that the establishment of the Republican Party is afraid of his boldness. Let’s hope we the people out here can awaken our backward-looking politicians so they can realize that extreme times call for extreme measures. We can never go back to the 20^th Century way of doing things. This is a new day, and if we are to save the Republic from the Left and the financial collapse that is imminent, we are going to need a risk-taker who isn’t going to be worried about the next election. His only worry should be for the future of the country, which is basically worrying about the future of his children and grandchildren.

On a national stage, Herman Cain and other minority conservative candidates have the ability to send shockwaves not only through the political landscape, but down deep into the dark corners of academia, where legions of liberal professors continue to wield a very harmful but successful narrative in order to beat young America’s potential defenders — both white and nonwhite — into a pulp.

A Herman Cain-headed ticket for 2012 would be unbeatable.  It would also represent a new dawn in America where gratitude, confidence, and initiative would overwhelm the resentment, anger and ingratitude so characteristic of left-wing political culture.

Please read the entire article here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/why_america_needs_herman_cain.html

//

The de-regulation started with Reagan and continued, YES, through Clinton and Bush.  (LOVE LOVE LOVE that you tried to leave Bush’s 8 destructive years out of that equation!)

Generality: no substance to back up the claim of 8 destructive years. Though many on the so-called right were not happy about the Republican congress and the President taking spending to new levels.

They wanted families who didn’t have much money to have a chance at the American dream. Their political pockets were also being lined by (as were Obama’s) the Wall Street ghouls who went lower than even the gov’t thought they could go by giving out gigantic aka “toxic” loans for enormous bonuses.

You’re reading too many left wing Blogs. I remember the banks being accused of “red lining”. I remember congressional hearing by these well intentioned politicos(and I do believe the general notion of getting people in to homes was at least in it’s inception…well intentioned.) The trouble is, statists are not willing to leave markets alone and cannot resist tampering with them. Banks were made the enemy and pilloried by the politicos for not giving loans to people who could not afford them.

The gov’t wanted to make acquiring a loan easier for middle and lower income people.

There is NO enumerated power for the government to do this and government tampering with markets ALWAYS has calamitous consequences.

Since there was no cap on how MUCH those people could borrow, and the bankers got bonuses based on how big the loans were, with NO blow-back for foreclosures when the people realized they couldn’t afford it OR weren’t aware they’d been given a sub-prime nightmare (stupid, I agree), the unregulated industry went mad lending money they didn’t have a prayer of getting back.

It was much worse than that. The politicos made it EASY for the banks to do this and encouraged them to do it.

In prior times a bank kept their loans in house and serviced them (collected the payments and up dated the paperwork). In this way the banks had every incentive to only loan out money to those they had confidence would pay it back. But this was too slow for the politicians. Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were tasked to buy these loans and have the banks service them. In this way the money could again be loaned out. (The executives of these quasi-government entities also took millions in bonuses for their part in this fiasco) It also took away ANY responsibility the bank had to ensure that they were loaning to responsible people. Once this ball got rolling, there was no stopping it. The politicians were getting what they wanted. Warnings from the Bush administration were ignored by Dodd and Frank who were over the committees that were supposed to provide oversight of these programs. Franks was still in denial on the dangers of this free-for-all right up to the time it all came crashing down. 

Why should they care when they knew they were “too big” for the feds to allow them to fail? This is NOT about housing “cycles” or a fickle market. The housing crisis was induced by greed, pure and simple.

I don’t disagree with the above paragraph BUT this would not and could not have happened had the free market been allowed to function. It was (again) government intrusion into this market, no matter how well intentioned (and I use that term advisedly as this turned into another way for government to buy votes of lower income people.) The banks may be greedy for money but the politicians are greedy for votes and protecting their cushy jobs.

See my essay http://politicallyempowered.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/statist-theory-%E2%80%9Cvice-is-nice-but-political-incest-is-best%E2%80%9D/

What the gov’t did was well-intentioned.

Damn government and their “good intentions”.  The road to hell is paved with them.

What the lenders did was soulless. If there had been regulation in place, for instance a specific percentage a borrower had to pay down and a SANE loan amount that jived with that, the housing market wouldn’t have gone off a cliff. Of COURSE housing prices rise and fall.

I addressed this above but that is the trouble with the government interfering into a market; they then have to anticipate every unanticipated consequence, which is IMPOSSIBLE TO DO. They then turn into micro managers and eventually kill off the market completely. As for the bankers, they were doing exactly what was asked of them. They would have again been pilloried by congress had they not.

But what happened here, what happened on Bush’s watch, was catastrophic, and a direct result of financial insatiability. And NO, I do not put the blame on Dubya. Many presidents and congressmen should have seen the problem with allowing the banks to make their own rules on this. But when we, the people, put them in the position to have to raise such ungodly amounts of money to get elected, AND we allow our supreme court to put NO restrictions on how much corps can donate to campaigns… this is all inevitable.

The above statement is getting into another area but I will go ahead and address it. Like most statists your cause and effect is inverted. The federal government power is limited by the Constitution. Or at least it was supposed to be. What you have now is the congress and executive branch can and will do just about anything they want under the guise of the commerce clause and to a lesser extent “providing for the general welfare”.

If the feds would stick to their enumerated powers as given in the Constitution, there would mostly be no need for lobbyist and generous donations to politicians. I would point out that unions have not had any restrictions on their donations to politicos resulting in very favorable legislation in favor of unions over the years which is, by the way, another area they have no business legislating in.

And WE have allowed it. And judging from the corporate medias reaction to the protesters and their message, WE are going to keep allowing it.

And ANOTHER thing – I’m tired of hearing that we need to protect the profits these people. The sale of luxury items is greater than it has EVER been in the this country while we hover at 9% unemployment.

The Olson twins sell a purse that costs $38,000 — and it sells out every time they make more. Mitt Romney just gutted a $12 million dollar home to EXPAND its size four times larger. It is a LIE that these people are suffering under gov’t rules and that that’s what’s keeping them from hiring more employees.

Again cause and effect is inverted. The rich will not give up their life style because of government regulation. Many however, will cut back on those things that may not be that important to them. Take for example the brilliant idea to put a luxury tax on yachts. Sounds good, extra revenue Whoohoo! Except those who might have bought a boat didn’t, resulting in Yacht Company’s market slowing down and who then had to lay off workers. And, oh yeah, revenue did not increase to the government. Who suffered?

Other of the rich will cut back on investments; starving corporations of capital, slowing the economy further… increasing unemployment. Who suffers?

What do you think is done with corporate profits? Much of this is paid to shareholders as dividends. Churches, retired people, people saving for their kids college. The rest goes into expanding their business, which results in more employment and making the “pie” bigger (for those who are productive) to share in. Despite the millions paid to executives in bonuses, this is a miniscule amount by comparison.

They have worked to get the public so desperate for jobs that we are all wearing 5 hats for less pay, and that’s IF they haven’t moved our job to China or India where they can basically have slaves. This makes me boil.

“They?” They work to get the public so desperate? As if corporation lay off workers with a maniacal laugh. That being said however, it should make you boil. But that wrath is directed at the wrong target.

Why would anyone want to move jobs to China or India? Corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders. They do NOT exist to provide jobs! They exist to produce products to sell at profit and increase value to their shareholder.

If it is more profitable to have work outsourced to India or China that is what they will do. Corporations are not evil for doing this. It is not malicious and they are not trying to do in the workingman.

The main reasons companies outsource jobs overseas is:
1. Income and other taxes
2. Regulations

Both are the provinces of government. If taxes are lowered and regulations made less onerous that will flood jobs back to the country in voluminous amounts.

And YES, my president should do hurt ‘em and hurt ‘em hard.

Ah…the true statist heart and intention. Stalinist even.

“Squeeze’em until they bleed. Make them pay for providing jobs, make them pay for taking them away. Make them pay until they go out of business” (and then moan that the unemployment rate is 10%, 15%, 20%.) “How dare these dirty businesses do that to our poor working men. Let’s squeeze the others more, more, more to provide for those that are unemployed.”

I know this rebuttal will have no effect on a statist…they are bullies by nature. A statist believes the government is the answer and the more control government has the better. This is where the real evil is: belief that the government is omniscient and omnipotent and is the source of productive endeavor — even though this flies in the face of all American history. Before government can give anything, it must first take it from someone who produced it.

“In my many years I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.” John Adams
//

All of the protestors blocking traffic, looking like 1968 all over again, have been having trouble of late coming up with a coherent message of why they are “occupying Wall Street.” Besides the fact that they are being “community organized” by friends of Obama, some of their legitimate gripes aren’t really with Wall Street (whose big shots have been big donors to their beloved Obama.) Many are mad because they find themselves in student loan debt with no job on the horizon. Now, other than themselves for taking out ridiculous school loans, and other than the lefties in our government who promoted the school loan mess, where should they be going to protest? Not Wall Street, but back to campus. This is from Dan Primack over at CNN Money.

In the weeks since Occupy Wall Street began, a clearer narrative is emerging. The protesters (mostly) aren’t asking that Goldman Sachs be tried for high crimes and misdemeanors or for the U.S. banking system to be dismantled. Instead, they are upset that the American Dream has become the province of the few, through little to no fault of the many. And Wall Street makes for an easy target.

But if protesters tire of Zuccotti Park, there is an even more idyllic setting for voicing their displeasure: The college campus.

Take a look at We Are the 99 Percent – a website on which protest sympathizers share their tales of economic hardship. Very few of them mention banks, or even bank bailouts. The vast majority of them, however, do mention college debt. For example:

I have an MS from a top university & 135K in student loans (& growing). I’ve lost 2 jobs in 3 months. I want to get my BSN so I can get a job, but don’t know if anyone will give me more loans. I can’t afford my antidepressants, & I need them more than ever now. I’m lucky I have friends I can live with, but that won’t last forever — then what? I am the 99%. Occupywallst.org

According to The College Board, average annual in-state tuition and fees at four-year public universities increased by 72% over the past decade. Four-year private college tuition is up by more than 34% over the same time period, during which inflation rose only around 25%.

Where is the university’s responsibility to its customers? Hell, where is its responsibility to America?

Isn’t college designed to enhance a student’s future well-being and, in turn, that of society at-large? How did it get corrupted to the point where higher education is the cause, rather than the solution, to so many of our collective ills?

Carnegie Mellon recently announced the receipt of the largest gift in the school’s 111-year history: A $265 million donation from trustee William Dietrich. In a press release, CMU discussed how the money will be used to “support interdisciplinary education and research initiatives across the university and across the globe.”

No mention, of course, of using some of Dietrich’s generosity to reduce average tuition at CMU, which rose 4% over just the past year to a whopping $43,160 (not including fees, room or board). Or even to keep it static. Instead, it’s all about build, expand, rinse and repeat. After all, U.S. News & World Report doesn’t reward affordability.

Read it all here:

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/10/05/occupation-from-wall-street-to-the-university/

Kevin Williamson over at National Review Online’s The Corner makes a big point that the protestors in the streets of New York City could learn a valid lesson from Steve Jobs, who died yesterday, finally succumbing to his cancer. We owe Jobs a debt the country cannot repay. He is an example of what good corporations do for their countries and the world.

…Mr. Jobs’s contribution to the world is Apple and its products, along with Pixar and his other enterprises, his 338 patented inventions — his work — not some Steve Jobs Memorial Foundation for Giving Stuff to Poor People in Exotic Lands and Making Me Feel Good About Myself. Because he already did that: He gave them better computers, better telephones, better music players, etc. In a lot of cases, he gave them better jobs, too. Did he do it because he was a nice guy, or because he was greedy, or because he was a maniacally single-minded competitor who got up every morning possessed by an unspeakable rage to strangle his rivals? The beauty of capitalism — the beauty of the iPhone world as opposed to the world of politics — is that that question does not matter one little bit. Whatever drove Jobs, it drove him to create superior products, better stuff at better prices. Profits are not deductions from the sum of the public good, but the real measure of the social value a firm creates. Those who talk about the horror of putting profits over people make no sense at all. The phrase is without intellectual content. Perhaps you do not think that Apple, or Goldman Sachs, or a professional sports enterprise, or an internet pornographer actually creates much social value; but markets are very democratic — everybody gets to decide for himself what he values. That is not the final answer to every question, because economic answers can only satisfy economic questions. But the range of questions requiring economic answers is very broad.

I was down at the Occupy Wall Street protest today, and never has the divide between the iPhone world and the politics world been so clear: I saw a bunch of people very well-served by their computers and telephones (very often Apple products) but undeniably shortchanged by our government-run cartel education system. And the tragedy for them — and for us — is that they will spend their energy trying to expand the sphere of the ineffective, hidebound, rent-seeking, unproductive political world, giving the Barney Franks and Tom DeLays an even stronger whip hand over the Steve Jobses and Henry Fords. And they — and we — will be poorer for it.

And to the kids camped out down on Wall Street: Look at the phone in your hand. Look at the rat-infested subway. Visit the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, then visit a housing project in the South Bronx. Which world do you want to live in?

So all of these “educated” protestors in the streets of New York City were given a raw deal, but it wasn’t a raw deal from the corporations. It was a raw deal from folks like Barack Obama and Barney Frank. It was a raw deal from those educators in their universities who taught them little and those administrators who raised tuitions to out of sight prices. Once again, it is the Left who is to blame for their woes, but they continue to blame everyone else. It is capitalism that will lift us out of the mess, not government and not corporations giving profits to government or some great god of the universe who will come down and wipe away the debt they brought upon themselves.

Read all of Williamson here: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279321/jobs-agenda-kevin-d-williamson

Just as an added bonus, check out this demand (and go read the other equally ridiculous) from some of the protestors, collected by and responded to by Ryan Young over at www.openmarket.org –

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

Do this and no one will ever lend again. This demand has so little understanding of basic human nature, let alone basic economics, that it frankly doesn’t deserve serious scrutiny. It just sounds like he wants all the trappings of a modern first-world lifestyle without paying for them. As the economist Deirdre McCloskey would say: no, dear.

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Moody’s and the other ratings agencies played a starring role in inflating the housing bubble. Oh, they deserve plenty of blame. But the solution isn’t to outlaw them. It’s to outlaw Congress from giving them special treatment. Congressional coddling allowed them to lie to their customers and not get punished by market mechanisms. Their legally protected oligopoly is an outsized example of crony capitalism. Don’t confuse it with the real thing.

It would seem by most of these demands, they didn’t learn a lot in college that translates to the real world. Word of caution to parents – if you send your child to a university, either counter the indoctrination they’re getting with real-world facts or look very closely at the university you’re sending your student to. This is the kind of education they’re getting. No ability to think rationally, just a lot of “demands.” Read it all here: http://www.openmarket.org/2011/10/05/occupy-wall-street-protesters-make-demands/

//

The timing seems a bit sketchy here. Just the other day it was announced that Obamacare would be up for review in the Supreme Court and would likely have an answer to its constitutionality before the 2012 election. The media were scratching their collective heads wondering why Obama’s Justice Department would allow it to be fast-tracked. A cynic might think it’s because they’re trying to get Justice Clarence Thomas either to recuse himself or to remove him somehow from the Court. This is from a story by Jessica Brady in Roll Call.

The group of 20 House Democrats led by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to the U.S. Judicial Conference, the governing body for federal courts, saying that Thomas has failed to report the income of his wife, Virginia, who earned $700,000 from 2003 to 2007 while working at the Heritage Foundation, according to news reports.

The letter came just days before the Supreme Court returns for the new session, during which it is expected to consider a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s sweeping health care law. With such high-profile issues on the horizon for the court, the lawmakers wrote, “it is vital that the Judicial Conference actively pursue any suspicious actions by Supreme Court Justices.”  Snip –

The lawmakers also suggest the issue should be taken up by Attorney General Eric Holder if the Judicial Conference determines that Thomas purposely failed to report his income and that of his wife. In its letter, the group cites a New York Times report that Thomas “benefited from use of a private yacht and airplane” owned by Texas real estate tycoon Harlan Crow but “failed to disclose this travel as a gift or travel reimbursement on his federal disclosure forms.”

Read it all here:

http://www.rollcall.com/news/democrats_call_for_inquiry_of_clarence_thomas-209072-1.html

The Left has been up in arms about Justice Thomas’s wife, Virginia, for a while since she is active in conservative issues, mainly trying to educate people in the broader philosophy of conservatism. You can read about what the Left has a problem with here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000473-503544.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

Rick Moran of the American Thinker website thinks it rather ironic for any member of Congress to be pointing their “ethics” fingers at anyone.

The idea that members of congress are pointing the finger at anyone for ethics violations is absurd. How many members have their wives, girlfriends, and mistresses on their office payroll? How many use campaign contributions for personal matters? How many routinely sponsor or vote for legislation that directly benefits their investments and personal bottom line? How many eagerly take a proffered junket sponsored by a lobbyist to expensive vacation spots?

Virginia Thomas is an accomplished woman, an activist, and the head of a prominent conservative group, Liberty Central. Her political activism has nothing to do with her husband’s work on the bench. To hint otherwise is indicative of the hypocrisy of liberals when it comes to the spouses of prominent government officials. Mrs. Thomas has carved out her own professional life and the Dems don’t like it. If she was a liberal, advoacating liberal causes, do you really think there would be a problem?

Read it all here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/10/dems_call_for_ethics_probe_of_justice_thomas.html

I did find more information about Mrs. Thomas’ income and where or why that must be reported in some ethical way. This is from the Los Angeles Times.

In his 2009 disclosure, Justice Thomas also reported spousal income as “none.” Common Cause contends that Liberty Central paid Virginia Thomas an unknown salary that year.

Federal judges are bound by law to disclose the source of spousal income, according to Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU School of Law. Thomas’ omission — which could be interpreted as a violation of that law — could lead to some form of penalty, Gillers said.

“It wasn’t a miscalculation; he simply omitted his wife’s source of income for six years, which is a rather dramatic omission,” Gillers said. “It could not have been an oversight.”

But Steven Lubet, an expert on judicial ethics at Northwestern University School of Law, said such an infraction was unlikely to result in a penalty. Although unfamiliar with the complaint about Thomas’ forms, Lubet said failure to disclose spousal income “is not a crime of any sort, but there is a potential civil penalty” for failing to follow the rules. He added: “I am not aware of a single case of a judge being penalized simply for this.”

The Supreme Court is “the only judicial body in the country that is not governed by a set of judicial ethical rules,” Gillers said.

You can read it all here:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/22/nation/la-na-thomas-disclosure-20110122

If there is a problem, it seems Charlie Rangel or Maxine Waters should be able to help Justice Thomas with it since they are two of the most ethical members of Congress. Right, Charlie and Maxine? Pay attention to this as it relates to Obamacare – you know if the Left can’t win by merit they will win by cheating. What was Bill Clinton’s famous line when threatened with impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky catastrophe? “Well, we’ll just have to win.” Well, right back at ya, Lefties!

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If all you know about Herman Cain is that he is a former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, then you don’t know Herman Cain. His experience is deep and wide in the business community, as president of the Restaurant Association, at the Federal Reserve and with political mentors like Jack Kemp. He’s a ball of fire with not just the ability to take lots of bulls by lots of horns, but with the love of country and the free enterprise system and the good humor necessary to get this country back on the right track. This is from a column by Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal.

You hear the same thing said about Herman Cain all the time: Herman Cain has some really interesting ideas, but . . .

I love Herman Cain, but . . .

But what?

But he can’t win.

Why not?

At best, the answer has to do with that cloudy word “electability.” Or that Mr. Cain has never held elected political office. Snip –

Cain ran and lost the race for Senate in his home state of Georgia to Johnny Isakson in 2004, and he hasn’t run again until now. But, he did beat frontrunners Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in the Florida straw poll last week, no mean feat.

Though he’s got the governorship credential, Mr. Romney’s emphasis in this campaign is on his private-sector experience. It’s good, despite the knock on Bain Capital’s business model. But measured by résumés, Herman Cain’s looks deeper in terms of working on the private sector’s front lines.  Snip –

In the late 1970s, Mr. Cain was recruited from Coca-Cola in Atlanta, his first job in business, to work for Pillsbury in Minneapolis. His rise was rapid and well-regarded. He joined the company’s restaurant and foods group in 1978 as director of business analysis. In the early 1980s, Pillsbury sent him to learn the hamburger business at a Burger King in Hopkins, Minn. Then they assigned him, at age 36, to revive Pillsbury’s stumbling, franchise Burger King business in the Philadelphia region. He succeeded. According to a 1987 account in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Pillsbury’s then-president Win Wallin said: “He was an excellent bet. Herman always seemed to have his act together.”

In 1986, Pillsbury sent the 41-year-old Mr. Cain to turn around their Godfather’s Pizza business, headquartered in Omaha. The Herman Cain who arrived there April 1 sounded like the same man who roused voters last Sunday in Florida: “I’m Herman Cain and this ain’t no April Fool’s joke. We are not dead. Our objective is to prove to Pillsbury and everyone else that we will survive.”

Pillsbury sold Godfather’s to Mr. Cain and some of his managers in 1988. He ran it until 1996 and served as CEO of the National Restaurant Association from 1996-1999. This June, Mr. Cain visited with the Journal’s editors and put the issue of health-insurance availability inside the context of the restaurant industry. He said the restaurant association tried hard to devise a health-insurance program able to serve the needs of an industry whose work force is complex—executives and managers, full-time workers, part-timers, students and so forth. Any conceivable insurance system would require great flexibility in plan-choice and design.  Snip –

It was Herman Cain who challenged then President Bill Clinton on Hillarycare at a townhall meeting in Omaha, NE  – saying that there were problems with that bill: It would force companies to fire workers. Herman Cain was a math major at Morehouse College and has a Master’s Degree in computer science from Perdue University. He did the math, it didn’t add up, and he’s credited (or vilified depending on your political persuasion) with bringing down Hillarycare. You can watch that video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy542UgSelQ

You can read another excellent article on Herman Cain by Robert Costa of National Review Online that goes in depth into his relationship with Jack Kemp and a multitude of other excellent facts about this impressive man. You can read that here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/267029/introducing-herman-cain-robert-costa

Continuing with Henninger’s article:

When Mr. Cain talked to the Journal’s editors, the most startling thing he said, and which he’s been repeating lately, was that he could win one-third of the black vote. Seeing Herman Cain make his case to black audiences would be interesting, period. Years ago, describing his chauffeur father’s influence on him in Atlanta, Mr. Cain said: “My father gave me a sense of pride. He was the best damn chauffeur. He knew it, and everybody else knew it.” Here’s guessing he’d get more of this vote than past GOP candidates.

Does a résumé like Herman Cain’s add up to an American presidency? I used to think not. But after watching the American Idol system we’ve fallen into for discovering a president—with opinion polls, tongue slips and media caprice deciding front-runners and even presidents—I’m rewriting my presidential-selection software.  Snip –

Put it this way: The GOP nominee is running against the incumbent president. Unlike the incumbent, Herman Cain has at least twice identified the causes of a large failing enterprise, designed goals, achieved them, and by all accounts inspired the people he was supposed to lead. Not least, Mr. Cain’s life experience suggests that, unlike the incumbent, he will adjust his ideas to reality.

Herman Cain is a credible candidate. Whether he deserves to be president is something voters will decide. But he deserves a serious look.

My businessman husband scoffs at those who think that a CEO of a business doesn’t know anything about politics. He says that a CEO comes in as a replacement. Some of those working at the company really liked the old guy, some of those working at the company really don’t like the new guy. Folks like Cain have to come in, get everyone on the same page and then save the company. Cain was able to do that. That takes political savvy as well as intelligence and commitment to a cause. That’s a huge resume enhancer. You can read more from Henninger here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576599031274832242.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

As a personal note, I was in the crowd at the Cobb County Tea Party in Marietta, GA in July 2009. Herman Cain did his radio program from there and was the speaker. His love of country and his amazing way of relating that to the crowd are memorable. He said as I recall: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – the Founders put them in that order for a reason. You can’t pursue happiness without liberty and you can’t have liberty without control over your own life.” One other one – he said something to the effect that his grandfather was a slave and he wasn’t going back to that – whether it’s a slave to a person or a slave to a government made no difference to him! Amen, Mr. Cain.

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